1684 2 1
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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.
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168400
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"One-upmanship" is a strategy for defeating an opponent somewhat unfairly without actually cheating.
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168464
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It's that day in July when you feel really bummed because you can't find your favorite white sleeveless shirt that you wear on the hottest days of the yea
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168394
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Once upon a time there was a Vietnamese restaurant. And then there were two, and four, and eight...
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168300
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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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168300
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Her fever spreads through lines of a plaid mini, over burnt milk, darkened to yellow. Fingers explore fabric folds up and into the lost dimensions of logic.
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1683107
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168300
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You and I will never meet. You will never even know I existed. Even in dreams you will never imagine me. Someone told me once that your sleeping mind cannot conjure up new faces. It just spits out all the ones you’ve ever seen and that’s it. That’s it.
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16832310
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If I should wake/
before I die,/
just shoot me through/
the one good eye.
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168350
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168345
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The last time Cyrus rode in a train’s passenger car, he came home a dead man.
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168344
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I try to enjoy my bookbut the mannequins keep tapping at the windowWhen I look up they vanish Outsidefibreglass clouds are kept in placeby invisible wires——Sometimes the mannequins …
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1683149
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Each day, they trot the coiffed/
and painted cadavers across the stage.
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16831010
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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, …
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16831413
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168331
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Warning: Open and read before making any dumb-ass New Year's resolutions.
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168253
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"My ex Maxine claimed red wine was the healthy alcohol choice. When we were married and I still had money she drank the expensive stuff, as if drinking Chateau Montrose 2005 instead of two buck chuck made her any less of a wino. She would have been better
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168222
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He grew up needing an enemy, his class warfare instincts kindled by the death of his father in the labor dispute and bolstered by the readings of Steinbeck, Lawrence, Sinclair and others, and the college-bound students who were particularly bothered by Pi
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168210
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At last one of the men on the line bowed his head in a silent prayer for deliverance from what was about to come, then lifted his head and shouted loudly for his fellows to charge.
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16821411
|
I dream of benzene rings/
and polymer shrouds
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168265
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I wake up on the edge of the mattress, teetering. The dog is looking at me funny.
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168254
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168277
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He laughs and runs just like the other boys even though he doesn’t have a father now, just his mom.
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168231
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The old man sat in the run-down shack, nursing his lobol-weed tea, and cursing the bitter cold wind outside.
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1682106
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Eight days before her 50th birthday they were married in their soft new pajamas, holding hands on his bed in the hospital. The pastor and witnesses wore protective hospital gowns and gloves; the patient was in isolation once again. A special dispensation from the head…
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168271
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My mother was Irish as Paddy's pig. So all her family. Lovely people they were. Also, seldom seen among the Folk; stone cold sober. My father's family; Bavarian German. Bavaria's the wrong side of the German tracks. Frankfort people laugh at Bavarians as people in…
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168200
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Still as the knife on the counter there still. Like mothballs in a chest. One with clear bags and newspaper clippings and your scarf inside it. The baby girl could put a mothball in her mouth and suck it like a penny. The way too close to a light bulb bur
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168265
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I got on the Greyhound Bus at 11 a.m. and sat by myself staring out the window. I could see the reflection of my own dark beard in the window, a 27 year-old man with a huge poem bursting my heart, gasping to get out into the bright lit-up world out there,
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16821614
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They are all sleeping, but I know better. I will keep watch and if he comes tonight I will be alert and ready. When he arrives he'll see the slack mouths, the graceless sprawls, hear the grunts, snorts and snores of the other women and then he'll sense me. My eyes will…
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168100
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The sound built up, louder and louder causing birds and insects to fly into the air. Then it stopped.
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