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“Why is there a gigantic sex toy sitting on your dining room table?” Mark asked recently. “That's not a gigantic sex toy,” I said. “It's a Wahl Hot & Cold Therapy Massager.”“Which is?” “An Advanced Pain…
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140856
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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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140741
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Pinnacles
State Park
lying on our backs
stoned on hash
around a campfire
looking up at the
clear see-through
blue green stars
to the other side
of the universe
I know now
you are out there
I float up to
within 2
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140732
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I unwrap my #4, the greasy smell wafting over my nostrils, and I pause, with the understanding that this will be the highlight of my day, and that I should savor the moment, and then I bite in.
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140751
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4th of July weekend, Woodland canyon, summer heat like the Garden of Eden, lush, green, secluded. She lay by the creek in a lounge chair under dappled shade from the sycamore trees, listening to the frogs jump and the birds sing, admiring the orange tiger lilies that…
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140712
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Their dump was like no other in the country. It was bigger than the rest. And, unlike their innumerable competitors, this dump—which sat packed with trash on the surf of an ocean—was organized with care.The Elks took pride in their dump. Three…
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140722
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It’s End of the World Karaoke at Big Daddy’s and Lara takes a photo of herself for Facebook before she goes on stage. She’s holding a basket of nachos in one hand and her phone in the other. After she takes the photo, she says, to Javier, “Hold these,” an
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14071210
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What did it mean? What would a psychologist say? Oh, who cares. In my opinion, we ask why, what, when, where, and how too often.
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140754
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John held up his pistol and racked the slide to chamber a round. He told me that he knew a few things. He knew I'd knocked up Nikki. His girl. He knew I'd taken Nikki to the free clinic in Gresham. He knew I wasn't…
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14071814
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The phone rings. The oven beeps./
The locomotive whistles and howls.
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1407105
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She looks for the obit, can't find. Over and over, looks. Nothing. Nothing except something touching her shoulder. Follow me. Corridors, doors, along and along, no time to notice that this last is the stage door — she was so suddenly there in the blare and…
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140741
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Motionless seconds turned
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140777
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I am my beloved’s Advil and
she is my Aleve
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140754
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If you can imagine a ghost taking a shower then you can imagine the kind of emotion I have in mind.
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140711
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I like babies and little kids, more than some people but goddamn, children's laughter out of nowhere (in the night, when you're not expecting it) is creepy. I don't like slugs smeared like nightmare goo on my summer-bare feet, I could do without them in …
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140722
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Many weddings took place at the foot of the Astronomical Clock Tower. One every hour, on the hour. It turned out these were set-up photo shoots for things like men’s cologne, brocade bridal gowns, and smoked carp. At night we wandered around the many
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140730
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A young woman is seated center stage. She is pretty, dressed in a short nightgown. She sits nervously, her body tense and expectant.
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140775
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Nine sated elephants and an ass sit around a decimated Thanksgiving table discussing the state of the union over the hacked to bits carcass of a twenty-three pound turkey. Two years in to The Great Communicator's Lame Duck term and the nine elephants, whose…
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1406179
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A young girl wavering between celibacy and punk mother-lust despair came to visit us each night
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14061410
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Warning: some of this is true, some of this is not.
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140622
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Her memory was a faded pastiche of the past, and indeed the present sat uneasily in the middle of the dreams that governed her mind; so it was that often she would forget the day, the time, the year.
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140698
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"Sara, do you taketh it with your eyes?"
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140674
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An old man in overalls with rags on his head known locally as Bo Peep made his way up from the black side of town to the white. After listening for a few moments, he shook his head in disgust. “Boy, you can’t play them blues.”
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140643
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Here’s the keys to the house
Here’s the keys to the car
I’m going out and I don’t care
I’m going out to buy a cigar
Don’t bother locking up after I leave
I’m not coming back anymore
I’m going to drink whiskey out of a jar
Go out and buy
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140633
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I didn’t see the little boy run up to Bandit until it was too late. The kid was about four and was excited to see such a big dog. He reached out his hand to pat Bandit’s head and Bandit lunged at him. The leash was wrenched from my hand, leaving a bloody
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140634
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When it was sticky cool at night, he'd pull her hair up off her neck and spin it like a pinwheel. “You could be anything," he would say. “You could be a preschool teacher.” She waited for him to add, “For dragons! For wallabees! For…
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140694
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The instructor moved over to the whiteboard and wrote in big block letters “FOOTBALL” and then crossed it out. “You should just never treat your newborn like a football. That means no passing it or punting it.
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140632
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Momma pointed out our paintings on the walls, the signs we had learned, but when Daddy saw our friends, their wheelchairs, braces on their legs, he left...
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14061111
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Why do people kill themselves with food? It’s obvious, I suppose. They’re hungry.
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1406117
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... his skin glistened
like a sharp blade
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