1578 1 1
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"Shit," said the Charge Nurse. "Not again."
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157822
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There she is. A paper doll of me. The dress, the lilt, the self-hatred. The crowd thins and swells in want of a scene. Conversations begin, pretend, then halt. My gin and tonic sweats into my hand and I lick at the…
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157822
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No one had told the newer tenants that the dead would be given votes, and they were in an uproar: it wasn’t legal; it wasn’t fair; it was creepy.
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1578105
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salmon sits gentler on my palate
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157821
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The leaves were meaningless because they were no longer connected to the trees.
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157897
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157843
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“106 more miles,” she said.
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157800
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Caster had always imagined the Consensus as a big room, as big as the world, filled with white space and people with quantum wings, flitting about, creating information. There were tinted bubbles for people to share for privacy, and the lights never went
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15782016
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The night before his mother's teeth began chattering.
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157852
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When a multinational big box furniture store opened just off the expressway outside the city selling all the same products at greatly reduced prices, they contemplated the possibility of closing their store.
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1578118
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“The beginning was good. That’s what he likes. The moment when you’re driving in the open air and your hair is flying and your skirt is whipping up around your knees, and he’s smoking, of all things, and happy and looking at you."
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157811
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Sleep left him like a fragmenting illusion. Suddenly, he was awake, like something pressing but fleeting had awoken him. Once awake, though, all he had was silence and stillness. His pulse quickened, his…
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157864
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I pull into the parking lot and see a group of roosters squawking and trying to overturn an ‘87 Pontiac Bonneville that's caught fire. They're pouring whiskey down their throats. They're weeping over a bag of economy sized frozen breast fillets.
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157853
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157879
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I don't know where to start. We're gaining flight. Did you seeanybody we know? The trees are always a concern. I don't thinkI know how to stop this thing from crashing into parked cars,that is if we live. You can say it was all on a stupid dare. They don't have to know…
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157832
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...Heroin. It helped them get through the tricks and sucked up their flesh.
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1577108
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After his chemotherapy failed, he went water skiing.
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157751
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Because he tells her to, she puts on a vintage Easter dress one size too small and sprawls in a circle of light on the dusty floor...
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157754
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The war they wage fills everything with holes.
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157785
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I dreamt once
a child’s drawing of a house
all scribbly black crayon
swayback roof crooked
chimney. God, do you
remember how cold it was
that night?
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157720
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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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1577109
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Catherine, after another haunted, bewildering morning wondered if there might be a way to hide from her nightmares. Was there a way to trick them? Shouldn't she try? She drove over the bridge, something she didn't often do, to buy…
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15771410
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Microscopic purposes emerged//
with their combinations and permutations
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157710
|
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157711
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On that balcony, on every other day, she practised her other, more worldly religion - gardening, specifically sunflowers.
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157750
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She said “I have to go”, he answered with his eyes “Don't” and they stepped closer to each other in the kitchen, a step on the tiled floor, the remnants of their tea cold on the counter top.
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157731
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Your favorite nickname
existed only in the bright red
cherry smoldering
at the end of your smoke.
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157621
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Sure my man. Show me the token I’ll show you the slice.
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157665
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I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause
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157662
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It was only two days before Christmas. Jonathan remembered his mother crying.
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