1457 5 1
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Two summers later, the ritual began. Carol left her house at midnight, having served her husband and daughter a heavy dinner that left them caged in their sleep. She was like a thief working in reverse: she rose from bed with her husband’s first snore,
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145731
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It was cloudy, the way he liked it -- no baking in the sun. People passed occasionally. He sniffed at the joggers, “Health Nuts,” he dubbed them. He hadn’t exercised since his last high school gym class.
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145722
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“You own your own burial plot, but you don't own your home,” he'd said, and I couldn't help but agree.
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145743
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145786
|
Our afterlife depends upon//
what interesting shape
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145700
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Only early June, but the heat feels like August. Eleanor and Shelby sit on the front steps of the old Victorian-style house in downtown Los Angeles, drinking homemade margaritas and watching the daylight drain away to dusk. Shelby slaps a mosquito away fr
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145611
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A procession of our somber youth—
stoned and stunned and
broken beyond repair—viewed
the boy carved of putty.
The mortician painted him
stuffed him, presented him
to us, the semi-living.
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145620
|
The sighs of the nearby shore came to me through an open window.Wave after gentle wave caressed her broad, sand crusted skin. Mesmerized, I lay still.The in out sound of breathing now filled the room.Your warmth enveloping me like the satin…
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145653
|
It was midnight. I was outside the cottage, digging another row of star-shaped holes for the shrubbery.
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145665
|
So few dreams are the doors they seem.
|
145662
|
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1456158
|
What's that snitch doin' here?
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1456136
|
She’s changed leaves to emeralds. Worn a shawl of inked birds’ wings.
|
145610
|
Even when the sun is gone and things get dark, usually the moon comes to reflect some light of hope until a new dawn can emerge
|
145677
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You've been given some really cruel thoughts that are not your own.You've been given some really stupid sets of rules which are impossibleto follow. You can learn to manage for yourself. Remember who youwere before they told you who you were. You've been trainedsince birth…
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1456116
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The days cut off by damp chill with every thought a different variety of protection.
|
145697
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MOSAIC Your eyes coal-rimmed, busted, burned by betrayal. You and I, knee to knuckle, skinny with disorders and blurred around our edges. Challenged by our experience and the ash of past-love dusting the grate, the state, the…
|
145674
|
They were
obviously having
some secret
beach affair.
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1455178
|
When I was young and self-born in religion my aunts, uninterested in being washed in the Blood of Christ, called me Preacher Boy. I didn't pay them any attention. It was fine by me, I said, if they wanted to sit around and paint their toenails . . .
|
14551413
|
The one-legged crow was back in the yard again today, as it was yesterday and may have been before, but yesterday was the first time I noticed it among the murder while using the binoculars that I often use to bring things closer, things like these iridescent and beautiful…
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145563
|
There’s an unending parade of drifters, outlaws and crazies and I always have to watch my back, but, then again, that’s nothing new.
|
145520
|
And now, the weather. The Cloud Wranglers have roped three solid clouds this morning, preventing the clouds from raining iron bars onto Human Brain Storage Center #17.
|
145520
|
Contemporary persecution of Christians takes on milder forms of torture like having to explain away something Pat Robertson said, or constantly having to hear about Fred Phelps picketing funerals because he happens to hate homosexuals.
|
145541
|
A tanka/haiku poem about grandma getting run over by a reindeer.
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1455156
|
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.
|
145564
|
But I had learned from ingesting Roberto’s glitter-eyed fear, it could make you never close enough, and then, never far enough away. And both at the same time.
|
145577
|
I spent most of those days in my car. Stashed in the trunk was a cache of precious stones, neatly sorted and separated, bound in smooth black velvet inside a smooth black briefcase.
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145499
|
People usually take fonts for granted.
|
145487
|
You are an heiress to drunks.
The statues of your forefathers stagger,
memorialized by gravity, their faces
half-lit eternally, as they reach into refrigerators
for another something
to keep away the cold empty.
|
145411
|
Margie sprayed the gift with her most expensive perfume and tucked it into her sweater’s front pocket. This way she could hold it close to her on the subway, so no one would see the pretty wrapping and try to snatch it from her
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