1614 1 0
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Three teeth. You can pick them out if you hit pause just right. Probably not a person in the entire valley who hasn’t seen that video from the Eastern Cheerleading Finals. They even showed the tape on the eleven o’clock news in Scranton, my face ci
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161400
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We were a perfect match of broken pieces of flesh and cobalt. We moved in waves of couch plastic crinkling and clicking.
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161431
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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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161333
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They look like giant golden raindrops, or flying saucers, or peculiar fish out of their element
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161321
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Forgetting her inhibitions, she dove for him.
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1613148
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Six months later, she was teaching theology / to refugees from est.
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161300
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The Kid, The Executive, The Doctor, and The Actress.
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161321
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There is truth you can’t escape or say any other way and expect it still to be truth.
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161371
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Emma Louise is walking over a concrete bridge when she spies, out of the corner of her eye, a man fishing, waist deep, in the river tumbling below. She is thinking that the water must be very cold on this autumn day, when she sees an extraordinary thing.
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161370
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He came running out of his narrow little shop, Berthillon
and chased me down the Ilse St. Louis street, saying,
“Monsieur, Monsieur, nous avon pamplemousse!
It’s ici, Monsieur. Your pamplemousse.
They just come in this matin, morning
and I’
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161332
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Von Meckel had us all go out and paint this huge red square around the Red Diaper Baby factory. Then he held a big naming rally, at noon, during our lunch break. We weren’t allowed to eat our sandwiches. There was all this pomp and circumstance. We were
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161398
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On my twenty-second birthday, in the spring of 1979, I had a crawfish boil, my first. Ninety pounds of red mudbugs on a picnic table spread with newspaper, my birthday cake sitting at the end of the table like an afterthought.I hadn't…
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16131817
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They meant no harm when they flooded farms in its swirls and eddies
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161321
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This was before the cancer, years before. He did this every day: up at five, before Astrid and Max. Four cups of coffee in the machine. A bowl of granola. Five hundred words. Five hundred words no matter goddamn what. Five hundred words on Sunday and Chri
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161300
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"I want more grandchildren to spoil," the woman said. Will took a swig of beer at such moments. Maxine only answered with “someday” and looked over toward her husband. She knew it was his fault, didn’t really know why, but blamed him anyway.
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161364
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bassackward/in the surreal/bathroom mirror
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161311
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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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161364
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"You'll be alright! Just pinch your nose!"
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161342
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Our dinner was over and we regretfully had to leave the restaurant. She leaves with enough shopping money for a few weeks. He, getting the rough end of the deal, has charged more money to his credit card at 19% plus cash withdrawal fees. So I ask myself
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161300
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... and photos of friends from former lives: the Wolfman; Drac; the Mummy; my ungrateful Son; even my gold-digging, coat-tailer ex-wife.
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161331
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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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161283
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161221
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The supervisor, sensing the fear in me, pats my hand and says "Never you mind! This is normal in the tomato. Every few days we rile up, make sauce, and regrow again. Have you ever been in spaghetti sauce before?"
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161252
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jaws blossoming with drool,/ a captured wolf slinks low/ across the crowded land/ for that most tender lamb/ to catch it by surprise.
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1612109
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...when they decided to teach her a lesson, it was with particular vigor and vitriol...
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161231
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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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161221
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Looming ahead was another polite suburban party at which, after a couple of pops, I'd say something that embarrasses my wife in front of her girlfriends. Or so she claims.
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161212
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“Choices overwhelmed us,” Thomas continued, years later, “like waves crashing.”
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161211
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There is no cement stronger than the one holding a miserable couple together.
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161253
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Rose lifted her 55-year-old legs until they were perpendicular to the bed and admired how girlish they looked. It gave her the sexy legs of a 20-year old, if the morning light was right and she squinted a bit.
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