1664 23 11
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Every Monday you brought your Sunday finest to the bus stop...
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16641414
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I realize the kid is still smoking. Shocked, I tear the cigarette from his mouth, throw it to the earth, and grind it to death with the heel of my boot.
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166497
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Even word dancers need rest.
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166499
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She may never know and it sureis a small world. She may neverknow and they have a list. She maynever know, I'm very grateful.She may never know and I couldhave sworn we were getting along justfine. I refused to say goodbye. I am still wearing those…
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166433
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A small bar of glycerin soap floated in the sink full of bloody water . . .
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166465
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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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166464
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We bobbed and weaved using our words like the sniffs of two unfamiliar dogs in a Wal-mart parking lot. Wary, but sensing we could be more than just polite neighbors, once we got past the normal darkness of strangers. There was no plot to our story yet, but we both seemed to…
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166411
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“We know you’re in there, motherfucker. Step out, slowly, and we might keep you fit for an open casket funeral."
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166456
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IN nature, it's hard to find a straight line. Stand on a beach. Look out to sea. There out far you might think you see a line where the sky comes down to join. Where two fields of blue meet. But where you're not quite sure for the line is a blur there. You…
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166444
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I imagine diving into a vat of dried fruit, enjoying the unmistakable sweetness in each shriveled morsel, until I find myself biting into an undetected metal shard.
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166343
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Except for the bathroom stalls—you know the one that goes “Here I sit all broken-hearted”—the only poetry in the house is composed by Hazel, recited to her fawning sycophants.
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166322
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166300
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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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166300
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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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166395
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My body feels chilly but it's not from the outside temps. It seems to me it's the opposite of a fever.
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166311
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Roanne hungered. Memory had ruled her forever. Shards really, edged like machetes: daddy, whose fingers had eyes in the dark. Momma, ensconced in the shadows. Inside the church, those pairs of short…
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16631210
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My little friend is no bigger than a minute. An even five feet tall, if that.
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166367
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Except where its waves break gently,/
white frothed and reassuring along the shore,
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166300
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I was awakened by a disturbing dream. He was no longer with me and I felt afraid. Everything was cloudy, almost blurry. I couldn't see much in front of me, but I knew for sure he wasn't there with me. Then he said the words I feared the most “I don't love you.…
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166362
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Chubby. Plump. Pudgy. Portly. Bulky. Buxom. Rotund. Ample. Hefty. Corpulent. Zaftig.
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166300
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Ever since they switched from paper scripts to the little rubber balls branded with code I have been inundated with sickness.
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166243
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The print is not ideal, it's true.
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166291
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Naked, we stood in my shower. When she kicked my tool, I noticed she had a toe ring.
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1662178
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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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16621510
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No jagged bits of crust were thrust up/
through the prairie’s black gumbo/
to give us cataclysmic mountain views.
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1662108
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After his chemotherapy failed, he went water skiing.
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166255
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beat them with fists and purses.
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166242
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Although badly educated, and although the Michoacána fought to deny it, she held the complex notion that borders are not abrupt lines, simple artifacts of geography and cartography.
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166263
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It was only a dream. No one died, nor were they even harmed. So horrifying!
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166231
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"I have a prehensile tongue," he said matter-of-factly. "I know how to make you feel good." Such confidence, I say. Prove it.We're sitting on the couch, watching a movie, but not paying attention to it. We sit side-by-side, my leaning into him, and his arm is around me,…
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