1605 6 4
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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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160565
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go ahead
stick one more morsel
into that piehole
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160552
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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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160566
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The day came shyly up to me like a rolling orange thing. Perhaps of alien origin, but not if the Buddha of our foolish hopeless dreamer inside has anything to say about it. It said, pick me up. I did. It looked like forever on the inviting horizon with trees as…
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160563
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Another bird hits the large plate glass patio doors as I am sipping my morning coffee.
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160585
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Marv felt a stirring. Warmth in his gut. "Maybe we should get together," Marv said.
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160496
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160464
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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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160454
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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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160440
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She wanted wolf cubs. Not kittens, not husky pups given as infant gifts with red bows around their scraggy necks. No, she wanted wolf cubs. Even when it grew to pace the length of her hallway - proud as men - she could not love it. …
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160491
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Literary agents, also editors,
But most assuredly not my creditors,
Someday they won’t mean jack to me—
The people who won’t get back to me.
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160454
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A Texas man was recently arrested for failing to return a GED study guide to his local public library. He'd kept it out for three years. This is the kind of news story that brings joy to a librarian's heart.The library where I work just installed a…
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160467
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The last night, I shivered in bed until three a.m.,
the blankets wouldn’t work,
or the socks,
or my tears,
but I reassured my heart
that my next love would be warmer.
He was.
And our air conditioning bill was so high we could’t afford it.
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160422
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There’s a crack in the cosmos,
and pink is leaking through.
There’s a crack in the cosmos,
fix the sink, the toilet leak.
There are many cracks in the cosmos,
numerous. This is how time escapes.
Good grief, they’re going to suck the cream
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160366
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some answers are enough to make you cry or laugh yourself to death
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160310
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Pay attention: our names were Bobby, Didi, Joanie, Mitch and Sam. It was popular in those days to wear big name buttons across your chest, and we’d line up side-by-side as we watched our reflections affix said buttons, anchoring them to our stiff lapels
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160375
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Why flash?because the moments, the moments, they pass in flashes of brilliancethat shudder, death glow alightand nothing makes sense beyond nowand nothing will help me but meand I am not even enoughnot my thoughts or your nod of assentor even the deep sigh of…
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160320
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It is a dark and stormy night, naturally
We’re trying to get some sleep
at a Travelodge in Eureka
when I get up at 3 a.m. to write
“Hard motel pillow receives snoring from neighboring room”
O Thesaurus, we need another word
Maybe it sh
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160351
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Some things are meant to be repeated
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160266
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“When I was six years old, Dad came home from Vietnam and picked me and Mama up from her sister's house in Boston. We packed a U-Haul with everything we owned from T.V. to toothbrush. Dad hitched the trailer to the Rambler and drove us South, back home to Carolina. A…
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1602147
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We sat in the weight room. The coach walked in with his clipboard and stood until we were quiet.
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160210
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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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160244
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It was a dark and stormy night.
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160211
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King's splendid stronghold Pressing down the earth below Broken by the grass
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1602127
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The dog awakens at the sound of a petal falling, sure that barbarians are at the gate. She opens wide her yellow teeth.
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160276
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you might as well be blind
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160200
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"You've fallen out of love with me, is that it? That you'll leave me for another girl, who has bigger boobs and fucks you better than I do."
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160211
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Her mother sighed, fingering the faux-pearls around her neck. Barbara's neck tensed, almost as though the hair on the back of it would stand up: Here comes a platitude . . .
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160264
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A sunrise over the dark Atlantic, on a perfect beach day, tasting of salt and warmth and powdered sugar; of last, desperate kisses of youth, still shivering from delicious night, is beautiful.A sunrise over the dark ruins of Syria, on hot dusted stones, tasting of lament…
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160253
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She came to my house late that last night and shucked off her things and we slow-danced to Cruisin' as beaded rainwater slid off her black hair to the floor. She smiled an almost quizzical smile as she drank me there with her eyes, as if I was some…
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