1638 9 8
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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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16381312
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Forty years later he was still her Romeo, she his Juliet.
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16381610
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Shadows are so admirable in film noir
less so on x-rays and mammograms
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163841
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"His middle name is Valentine, and when asked about it, he isn't sure why."
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1638188
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Jesus is for sale. But he’s heavy.
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16371411
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Tender bodies sizzle on the grill.
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1637139
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No king of Ithaca, but of each/
whining, banging, dust–clouded island/
of focused, physical work
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163733
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I said, “If this rose doesn't grow another petal in twenty minutes, I'm burning down the neighborhood.” “Just let it go,” said Paul. “No,” I said. “That's what's happening right here.” “You'll try again next…
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163722
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" I have no idea what's goin on out here, and I'm gonna find out one way or another."
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1637106
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People Who Go to Poems for Truth
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163741
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Byron's achievement, certainly quite remarkable, is to have raised the drunken monologue to a literary form.
Edmund Wilson
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163742
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Culloden County, MS - 1989 All Janine knew was the idiot had a gun. As to why he would ever need one was beyond her. He couldn't look dumber holding it, either. He was too small for it, or at least he looked that way to…
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163720
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A shadowless torpedo shaped form plummeted from the grey, overcast skies upon the many unsuspecting. No remote pilot thousands of miles away guided this particular descent.
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163744
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My father's cousin is Salem the Dead.
Famed, an infant Lazarus of Libya,
he was brought lifeless from the womb,
yet awoke to the chill of a mortuary slab.
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163700
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The bullet split her head in half before she could finish her sentence. Her blood sprayed out onto my face and covered my lips. The taste of life as it suddenly ended.
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16372112
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No twinkle- so, planet, not star./
And bright, so either Venus/
or Jupiter. I’m guessing, Jupiter.
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163764
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The cat wound itself around Megan’s neck, its purring curling through Megan’s consciousness. She was the cat and then herself, both things at once.
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163753
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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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163731
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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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163633
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From this distance, he reminded me of a sleazy pink flamingo, waiting for feeding time at the zoo to deepen the timbre of his feathers and hint at the promise of a narcotic aviation before his commune of hens.
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163632
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it's the constant reminders of something that was never a constant remind her but i suppose there is no ticking clock on that which is wondrous and it was right right it's hard to come up with cleverly phrased universal truths and it's hard to make…
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163632
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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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1636109
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...when they decided to teach her a lesson, it was with particular vigor and vitriol...
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163610
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No matter how much he composes and prepares, he cannot override the electrical trigger in his brain. Something to do with the resonance of physical memory. It remembers amplitudes of current.
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16361814
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The phone rings. The oven beeps./
The locomotive whistles and howls.
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163601
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I followed the curve of the etched Koi, its filigree scales arcing across a taut midriff toward the indent of her pierced navel, where a collection of water lilies drifted on the surface of her skin.
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163630
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Theresa Esposito woke to the smell of pignoli cookies baking. The sweet scent made her stomach rumble. She was ten-years-old today. And she felt ten. Her hair, her ears, her eyes, her toes — everything felt ten.
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1636109
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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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163643
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A story about convincing people to do things they don't want to do, written entirely in dialogue; originally published by CHEAP POP.
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1636104
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The aisle, nave and/
transept twist themselves/
into an auditorium.
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