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Five Million Yen: Chapter 9

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Naked Lady? I know that from somewhere. Then he remembered. That's what they called those old 1930's and 40's Conn saxophones, Naked Ladies. How would Smith know that?

black tulips

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the memories return like they do every year at this time

Milo

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I call him a Staffordshire terrier. You call him a pit bull. Some people say he's lovable. Other people say he'll bite your face off without thinking too hard.

Aurora

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Soon everyone will know what is coming.You cast a spell of heaviness and I crumple, horizontal. Like Aurora, sleep is my destiny.Tantalus in reverse, my curse from food forever I will flee, while everything changes;discomfort and…

The Wild Silence: Intro

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He huddles against the wooden beam of a chop suey stand, glaring out into the giant technological organism that was his city. Lights, hulking monstrosities and endless possibilities were teeming in the night-hustle that surrounded him.

Mastery of All Thangs Including Sonatas and Piledrivers

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My old buddy Snoop Dogg saunters into the room, and we go through a handshake routine that takes over ten minutes, ending with double-backflips and some brotherly penis swordplay.

Tying A Knot

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The months leading up to that night were unbearable. It was as if a debt loomed over us begging to be paid. We both knew I would find you dangling at the end of a rope, it was only a matter of when.

It's Like

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It’s like drawing with Cesium

Geode

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There is a rock somewhere with the truth of the sky in it, the glitter of otherworldly charms that falsify the ugliness of the literal.

Secrets and Piles of Money

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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.

1957: Kathleen Eulalie, Widow

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My lipline's retreated since Tuesday. I'll toss those Hazel Bishop reds, (lipstick on shriveled lips rattles men, scares little children) skip Woolworth's cosmetics counter, save backaching, ankleswelling pondering of powders, rouges, …

The Diaphragm

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They had a deal, she reminded him. If he didn’t want to wear a condom all the time, he’d have to help with her birth control.

She's Butoh (ELECTRIC DELIRIUM 1.4)

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She overcomes herself on the day of the spectacle, clown paint, unmoving amid a rumble of trains and screens, video logs and snapshots, live blogs from phones wet with lotion. This is Tokyo. Facial masks. Bare flaking paint in streams. Stardust.

Gertrude

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When we were young and small we played in the orchard. Mom made apple pies and fried apples, caramel apples and apple sauce, apple cider. Grandma’s apple butter recipe.

Brock & Cheryl: Comp

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This Tippy’s name was Cheryl — something both of them were so far not committing to paper or saying. Unusual in a salesman, she thought. He is insincere and intends to sell her something.

match point

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two roses her eyes aqua-blue no, blue-green

Reversal

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For reasons he couldn't fathom, his motorcycle only moved in reverse. He engaged the engine and lurched backward hard. He called a friend, a gear-head with perpetually dirty nails, asked him to look it over.

Taking A Walk

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13 rooks on a lifeless tree

Dance 'round an Invisible Fire

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“Do we really want to treat her? Is she even really sick, or does she live in a country as real as ours, but one we can never visit?”

Foundations

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King's splendid stronghold Pressing down the earth below Broken by the grass

Gothic Clockwork Apparatus Man

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an awkward stage between glued popsicle stick marsupial, and mechanical tin foil mammal.

Need and Desire

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“I mean it, Hanna. I don't want you to.” But his leg felt carved away where her head had lain. One stupid thing jostling another for attention. He was afraid that if she touched him again, he'd have her on the ground.

Last Words

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I met Barry Hannah once in my life. I’d come to Oxford, MS, to meet an entirely different writer whom I thought then and think now very highly of. I’d also come to escape from another slew of regrets. Oxford is a great city to run away to.

Land of Our Fathers

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He called me one Friday when I was a kid and told me he wanted to go trout fishing. He had dreamt that I was a worm or a fly -- he couldn't remember which -- but he was sure I would bring good luck to the stream. The next morning, before grandma awoke, I

Chalk, Fish and Monkey

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She picked the fish out of the box leaving a pool of mucus and blood slowly congealing on the shelf and dripped it toward the kitchen table. Outside the wind lashed the tops of the poplar trees together and rain sprayed from the barn roof opposite.

Location

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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…

Deal Me Out

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Vegas is turning out to be my kind of town. Easy money, free booze, and everyone is too overstimulated to realize I’m broadcasting right into their noggins.

Meadows

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The whole thing is broken. It's like an egg. I'm not saying this to get you to say something else in the sunny opposite direction of the tattooed scar upon my painted backyard scene. I don't really care. It's only on me. Not on you. I'm glad as…

Another Etiquette Lesson from the Jungle

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I lie on the floor of the hut and for some reason I start to think about the Harvest Days carnival and that game where you have to toss a dime in a dish to win a stuffed animal. Next thing you know I’m a little tiny guy in there in that world of plates

1994, What I Wanted

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Xanax, A hand gun, And the courage to pull the trigger