1634 2 0
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My sister Janis called me from Berlin and said to turn on the news. You could see the thick flurries of snow that were falling there and the flat feathers of peoples' breaths issuing from their mouths as they took turns swinging pick-axes, standing on top
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163452
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I am getting twisted like a cruller into the mess I have made of this morning and I am stretching the meaning of morning to way past its boundaries.
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163452
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Ben considered his options in the taxi to Charles De Gaulle airport.
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163355
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Now as my fearful hand goes unwittingly up I search the faraway trees for the closest possible answer I know I don't know. The clever waiting beast is looking my way with an intelligent roving eye that says he likes to hit. It doesn't matter. You're worse…
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163300
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The tiger-eye beads around her neck would wink at me like a nervous uncle sharing a secret with a child. They roll on her sternum like marbles. At night, on her nightstand, they whisper my secret to the patchouli-scented room. How long have they known?
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163310
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"My tits, " she instructed "aren't for public consumption".Everything was actually muffled and my ears began to bleed because of how progressively louder the thumping was in the center of my chest. Stacy decided to emphasize her point of disliking the objectification…
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163340
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Holy shit, man, look at that!” Mike's pimply face melts into drooling bliss. His dad had stopped in this whacko town on the way to our campsite, muttered something about angry lesbians, and disappeared. Rick and I follow Mike's dumbstruck gaze to a shop…
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1633126
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Every morning, Wilma's husband Richard would cross the street and visit with a neighbor, always after the neighbor's husband left for work. Wilma was a loner, never bothered with neighbors. She enjoyed sitting on her patio in her lounge chair,…
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1633156
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As the other mammals go extinct,/
we can’t presume we are immune//
because of big brains and a history/
of belief in the control of nature.
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1633104
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Come, bring your sadness
to the precipice of my body,
bury it within me like a tool
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163210
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Darrell and I pulled into my driveway after being out all night long. A slash of sunlight fell across the purple Mexican sage beside my front walk. Except for the birds in the trees, there seemed to be an odd serenity to the air — until I spotted one
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163286
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You speak English so well.
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163211
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From above we see the trampled grass circling the house. Trampled grass from where half starved alligators circled the house, hissing and issuing low moans. Half starved alligators deranged by the red skies circled the house in the late August of the last year. Beginning in…
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163200
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They screened the thousands of mosquitoes that hatched, and found a few carrying the botox transgene. In a few months time, several billion mosquitoes had been bred, ready for release. Now to wait for that diplomatic flashpoint, when war could be declared
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163266
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A man who is sexually attracted to playground equipment was recently banned from “any location with a slide” after being caught having sex with one. Christopher Johnson, 46, was described by the newspaper who reported this item as having a “powerful…
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163251
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Though we came to life as to a school/
We leave without graduating
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163243
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Don't throw earth on bones.
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163264
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Corina's skin is a circus tent. Her red-striped peppermint scars are a reminder of Christmas and family traditions. The obedient poodles of her childhood dreams jumped through hoops of fire until they became bald and grotesque. Poor dears, now, they no longer yap. They…
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163265
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go ahead
stick one more morsel
into that piehole
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163200
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Their faces covered in shadow, smiles so relaxing, a tall woman approached her, gently rubbing her face. Her lips moved with no sound, but Sora subconsciously understood what she said.
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163252
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Now they are sleeping in a poppy field, sun-drenched warm afternoon girls lying on their stomachs and sides, faces in flowers, and flowers blowing, blowing. If this afternoon were every afternoon, the world would be cured.
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163296
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163231
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Every damned time we came back to Richland County, I told JuneBug to just do whatever she had to do but to leave me and Skeeter out of it. And every goddamned time, we ended up somewhere like this, the two sisters hook-armed and conspiratorial, and Skeete
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163200
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In the grip of a bad dream, she bolted awake, thinking she had heard the nightsounds of a tomcat crawling around her property.
It was some dreaded hour before dawn; she had no idea when. Her small, frail body was stiff, her breasts swollen and sore to
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16311210
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of placing the rope just so; of settling
the veil with care --
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163131
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The drapes are closed against the sunlight, but Ginny can feel someone in the room. She peers through barely open eyes so as not to let on she's awake. She adjusts her position in a way she hopes mimics sleep, turns her head to the side. A woman…
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163164
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Luke was in the gutter, his face in stagnant water littered with cigarette butts, condom wrappers, and green shards of glass from broken beer bottles. A man was kicking him in the face with a boot the size of a U-boat, over and over and over again. Blood
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163194
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Creep up behind me one day and prick my skin. I promise you won’t draw blood – for it is ink that will spurt from my veins.
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163154
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Everyone hoped to be assigned somewhere they could just drop in on their way home for Memorial Day weekend. Someone said, Blake, you’re single. You hate your family, don’t you?
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163132
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Her students read their work aloud in class, haltingly, sometimes proudly, and their willingness amazed Miriam. They were immigrants and retirees, carpenters, security guards, Indian nannies, Iranian escapees. She loved their odd word choices, the lack of editorial impulse.…
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