1493 7 6
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In the blacklight of the storm, mother would tremble, spit and sway as the shutters would clatter and she would give away her balance. It was more than my heart could bear. She would always center her accusation with, “your boyfriend is a rake and a flam.” That…
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1493138
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She bought a dog with short legs to make her own legs look longer.
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1493118
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None of this is real, he says, and the path slopes down to a house that is possibly haunted. One always looks in such windows, one cannot not look at the predictable detritus of another's failure, a queer satisfaction, a fairy's dust. But no, not real, none of it. And…
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14931212
|
a poem about things exploding/burning down/scattering for miles.
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14931410
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In those years,
you and I were told to leap
for a world suffused with sound
and industry.
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149333
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Her body: normal as a body, a baby’s body: skin and eyes.
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149361
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I was quite alone in this small room with the tarp and the dying fire.
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149344
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“Gladys Miller!” the dog shouted. “Live a little. TiVo it.”
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149334
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Carl’s peculiarity of toilet paper rolls is not covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act – he’s looked it up.
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149332
|
Hope was beauty before I even knew what beauty was with her golden pigtails, brilliant blue eyes and an infectious smile — even after Jamie Delano flung his Frisbee, knocking out Hope’s two front teeth.
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149211
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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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149255
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I guess you’re gone now
That’s okay
I guess I can live with my own ghosts
I had no idea
What it meant
But now I do
It meant I was standing
At the end of everything
And did not know it
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149200
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And it's a tough thing
to become a father,
a contradiction;
guiding a child to avoid the things
that you know about so well.
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149296
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149232
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“Hi. I’m Rita Bates,” I had said. “Can I sit here?
The boy who introduced himself as Thomas told me I could, so I did, and his friends all introduced themselves in turn. Around the table there was Bev, Ernest, someone whose name started with an F – maybe
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149200
|
Tadd Dameron once described himself as “the most misplaced musician in the business,” and one needn’t call the missing persons bureau to determine that he may have been right.
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149212
|
I have no confidence that you'll complete the task. Shit, you probably don't even understand it in the slightest.
|
149243
|
Don't throw earth on bones.
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14921210
|
My little friend is no bigger than a minute. An even five feet tall, if that.
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1492105
|
Walter met Danial at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They didn't have much in common at first, other than AA, with Walter on the recovery side of treatment and Danial reluctantly just beginning.
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149230
|
His mother named him Far because she had high hopes for him
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149242
|
THE man in the tent with the stick points to the chart on the wall and says to us all: the stats point to the end of the war by the end of the fall. A just war, not just oil. Just then Allah's shadow comes over the scene. He's here to stiffen his troops with some …
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149277
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They blew in the doorway of the café at the French Hotel like two sparrows chasing each other. Their wings down in the dust, unheeding any danger in their hunger for each other. I knew the man who was about to become her husband, so maybe this was her las
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14921613
|
He'd hung above her head for months.
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149231
|
"On the podium at Pride, he owned that he'd loved taking his children to playgroup as he got to ogle all the breast-feeding mothers. "
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149299
|
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149111
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Background
foreground
life in the middle
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149132
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... and the train pulls up and my shadow from yesterday steps off, and I'm standing on one leg balancing just like the weather between winter and spring, I hear a siren and my heart races, I'm about to step aboard when I hear footsteps behind me and two hands cover my eyes…
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1491178
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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 . . .
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149100
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“Would you look at that one!” my father said.
“Who did she know?” my mother asked.
“Who did she blow?” my father said loudly, and burst out laughing. I laughed too, although I didn't know why.
My mother shot him one
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