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When I first met Luther he was sitting on the sidewalk, his back pushed up against a vacant storefront wall, thumbing through the “help wanted” section of a few-days-old copy of our local paper and I was moved to offer him a couple of dollars for which he said,…
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167133
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You compare the brightly-colored wires sprouting from the bandage wrapped around your stepson's head to a bouquet of flowers. The tech sits in a chair next to Brett's hospital bed and holds up line drawings of common objects: cats, boats, skyscrapers,…
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1671116
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I write poems as if language matters.
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167140
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“Well, aren’t you the cutest thing?”
Shelly looked around for the source of the line and one of the better looking bar flies met her gaze. He wore a faded t-shirt with a swoosh graphic that read ‘Just Do Me‘. True to its mystical nature, her indefatigabl
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167055
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beat them with fists and purses.
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167053
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“You’ve put all my anorexic friends on the table nearest the buffet,” I say. “And all my bulimic friends on the other side of the room away from the buffet and the toilets.”
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167022
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Why yes I began writing this, my bildungsroman, Who is Mitsy Jackson, in spring, 1974 or thereabouts, and thank you so much for asking.
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16701011
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She left knives and hot pots with handles akimbo. Like a guardian angel, he turned them in. Like an ungrateful Eve, she turned them back out.
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167076
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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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167020
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She dips a toothpick in ink, running prick over paper, simply to prove herself wrong.
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167097
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I want to tell you things you do not know.
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167065
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When I first started out in my working career, I made it the habit of obtaining jobs with companies that were about to go under. (I wrote more books while on unemployment than by any other method.) I was a real bloodhound at sniffing out the pre-dawn od
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167054
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...listening to the ache of errs our mouths had become.
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1670179
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Words darken with smut and irony over time.
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166921
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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?
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166976
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The note was a lie, multiplied through each member of its potential audience....
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166900
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“A shibboleth is a test—a way to separate da wheat from da chaff that's as old as the Bible, but as new as the latest trend in men's fashions,” Gus says.
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166922
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my mouth is open, ready to bite your tiny toes
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166900
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Everybody knew Billy Miller. He had messy hair and crooked teeth that he hid behind a thin-lipped smile. He and his friend Jimmy Rodgers, who everyone called Cock on account of his red hair that stuck up like a comb, were inseparable. They liked to ste
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166943
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We decide not to go to the emergency room
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1669158
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Susan said since her divorce three years ago there have been too many Jacks in her life. Seven, if she counted that older guy. She knew that now. Too many. It was the name and little else that drew her to men. She told me the name alone was like Pavlov's bell. It…
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166900
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Jumping from roof to roof, Keiko and Rumiko remained quiet after hearing Mayumi’s story. They saw the shrine ahead but they knew they were going to run out of buildings to stay above.
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166995
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I fully intend to show Hamilton the delights of soft Oriental carpeting and a delicious new position I learned not long ago. It involves a silk scarf, a leather strap and some aromatic herbs.
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166920
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One day when they were sitting on the curb together at 4th Street and Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa and Joe was calling out to passers by in a singsong voice, “Spare change for cigs,” she had persuaded them that they should try to join the circus.
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1669105
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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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166951
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He was choking on the fumes.
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166975
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...the daffodils will fling/
their yellow petals, taunting winter
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1669108
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Sunday morning beginning with a bang. Accused, found wanting, sentenced.
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166976
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Despite what the bible says, Shadrach and Meshach had no third brother named Abednego. To pay for his cello lessons, Yo-Yo Ma worked the subways of New York as a busker. Just chill. After Sal went into witness protection, he yearned for a job at the art…
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166921
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It was all things considered a particularly odd sight, which Annalise did not know how to handle.
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