1489 5 5
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There was a certain romanticism in it, the salty old man sidling up to me at a bar, rhapsodizing in a slurred stream of conscious about the state of the world, the country, the state of his own heart. He didn't have an eye patch nor beard, nor was he…
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1489 5 2
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“I would like to keep my head, at least for a few more nights. Didn't you say we were gonna have sex one of these days? Isn't that in the manual?”
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1489 3 1
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The poppers, the Viagra, the chorizo – all had been ordered and all had arrived.
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1489 3 2
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I could smell a bold combination of cheap perfume, stale smoke, and sex excreting from her weathered pores. The bus engine hummed as we climbed a winding road. She scratched her neck and tried to finger comb through her knotted hair. I caught a glimpse of
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1489 7 4
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I don’t know what to do with all this money flowing from my books.
It’s burning a hole in my literary pocket.
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1489 3 1
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"She saw they were absorbed in making faces at each other with a smartphone app that enlarged a mouth."
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1489 6 5
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Ivan was used to explosions, but this was high in the sky. He was on his back between tall sunflowers that grew infinitely in all directions. The blast made the flowers bow their heads. Bits of debris fell from the blue sky, some shiny, trailing fire or smoke. The boy…
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1489 6 5
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Resting bitch face strikes again.
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1489 14 11
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chains across all the old doors
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1489 13 10
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You should never have believed your daddy when he said a man with half a dog was better off than a man with no dog at all.
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1489 10 8
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The best thing about being a cowboy is the cows.
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1489 1 1
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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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1489 19 10
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1489 10 7
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For you have waited. And waited and waited. And soon your slice of bread will be ready.
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1489 0 0
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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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1488 5 4
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Facebook just hit me with an ad for coping with memory loss, probably because I just turned 63. As far as my favorite social media site is concerned, I am now an Old Lady. When I asked my Facebook pals who are also Seniors what kind of promotions have been turning up…
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1488 6 2
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It was only two days before Christmas. Jonathan remembered his mother crying.
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1488 3 1
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The TV projects from an insect arm. It has the face of my ex-husband, smiling and void. I like to set small fires and inhale them.
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1488 2 0
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You held my hand when I hit the ground and told me the shakes would start soon.
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1488 2 0
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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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1488 3 1
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Nothing is ever hoarded in our house, everything is eaten.
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1488 2 1
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My buddy had been in the computer business, a systems analyst. Surely there would be some mention of him online. But there was nothing. Nothing, that is, until I saw the obituary.
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1488 15 11
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Early Spring, 1075, Northumbria: Judith, too ashamed to speak, too angry to cry, waves her handmaiden away. She wants no food. Wind drives icy rain across the thickness of…
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1488 9 4
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In this lab, where I work 40 hours a week,
live the ghosts of questions asked.
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1488 3 1
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The blackout lasted longer than anyone thought. From my fifth story window, the whole city seemed to shut down. I heard noises above me. How could it be?
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1487 11 4
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He is leaning back against a pillar watching the dancing; a spectator to joy – both planned and spontaneous – that’s unfolding in bodies fourteen and fifteen years old in front of him.
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1487 6 4
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We became The World Famous Shadow Puppet Theater because we thought that the best way to become world famous was to act as though we already were.
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1487 10 4
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The next day I can’t recall at all, a waste, like the flash of twenty years of my life, faces that pass you like comets in some erogenous unnamed zone of night, but they got me in some isolation room with my wrists in leather restraints.
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1487 18 10
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I loved without marriage and the men loved without divorce and we loved a twenty-four-year-old eating and how gracious she shone over a tame bottle of beer.
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1487 0 0
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“So, do you still think I'm hot? I mean, do you think men still find me attractive?” Jenny asks. This is never a good question to answer, much less entertain. I know this as surely as I know anything. Still, let's break it down. I am married. Jenny is…
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