2623 37 19
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It had been so long since the telephone had rung, he’d forgotten the sound.
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26212217
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Mama reads about UFOs in paperback books and newspapers with big cloudy pictures. Her girlfriends know about flying saucers, too. They get drunk at night when they are sitting all alone in their living rooms because they are divorced or married to men who
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261876
|
Soon the entire sky load of constellations
was carried across the bumpy fields
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26162018
|
The doctor told me:
"You have 24 hours
to live.
no more, no less."
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261522
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Planned developments have garages in the back, hasty retreat and advance protected by the Genie Automatic, come and go and go and come, waving is optional.
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2613116
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Follow my finger up the canyon wall, past the Chevy wedged into its own ferocious orbit. It was that innocent...
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261152
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He had been the innocent stooge for a young girl's selfish dreams. He vowed to be more careful. He would rather be lonely, if need be, than compromise himself with girls like that.
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26092115
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The dog is there, on sorry legs, with sorry claws. He looks toward the man, the bat, and says, You know me, Man. I know you know me.
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26082916
|
Moving is like moving upstream, like swimming underwater against a mighty current. You are salmon people: pink, vulnerable.
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260654
|
The morning of her suicide, Nonny Rice received a letter.
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260677
|
My father-in-law is drunk. This is something only my husband and I know: the old man does not stagger or flail, he is not vacant; neither too-friendly nor hostile to the woman who shows us to a table and sets down three bundles of silverware wrapped in paper…
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2604137
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It will be a beautiful, luminous, rollicking, transcendent book, the manuscript smudged with tomato sauce and tears.
|
2601137
|
If I had a daughter, this it how it would be. It would be all, Stand up straight, missy, shoulders back, no slouching, and she'd be sulky, sullen, pouting, wilful, and I'd see in her eyes, which would be my eyes, that she was starting to hate me, and I'd
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26001416
|
I get it. Poetry is an effort. Language is an effort. Words are an effort. Reading words is an effort. A big effort. It takes energy. Attention. Focus. Who has that? Nobody. So truly. I mean it. You don't have to read this. If you're already reading this you can…
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25982220
|
We were always thrilled that the moon worked the night shift. In high school, often bored with the two drive-in movies, we'd sometimes go to tent revivals on our dates and get healed or get saved depending upon what that “tent-housed”…
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25984118
|
Tap shoes are the portal to the opening of heavens that will ignite me with the highest voltage of electricity, give me the gift I was meant for at birth. Prophecy.
|
259863
|
But others maintained that Billy Navins was a mad dog that needed to be put down and were just as glad that Lester was around to do it. " Call it a mercy killing," someone said. " Put the poor bastard out of his misery, didn't he ?"
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25982010
|
We construct a paper bridge. The droid walks across it. We follow, one after another, like sentences in a story.
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259800
|
Oryn’s eyes opened wide as her smile removed the sadness. She stood in awe with what she saw, as the sound of footsteps drew closer to her.
|
259711
|
The summer of 1974, between high school and college, I got my first real job, paid corporate employment. My mother couldn't stand having me underfoot, sitting around all day, watching TV. She drove me in the family station wagon to a temporary secretarial agency. I told…
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259622
|
They sway from his hips, the torn knapsack, and the corners of the pushcart
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25922015
|
I tell my friend, the animal lover, not to get too near the panther's cage. "Why not?" she asks. "You'll see," I say.
|
2591169
|
******WARNING: Long-ass story****** Click at your own risk.
|
259021
|
“We should go again,” said Krishna.
But Iqbal didn’t reply. He sipped his tea like he hadn’t heard, but a tremor passed through his right shoulder. His left arm was bandaged, and the wrist and lower arm were in a c
|
25861110
|
‘Last week,’ I said, ‘on the radio, there was a competition. The DJ played a sound-bite of a car going over a cattle grid, and people had to phone in to guess which cattle grid it was. I didn’t phone in, but I knew the answer.’
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25853324
|
your mania for sentences / has dried up your heart
|
25851912
|
I went out through another cold still morning erasing my steps behind me not because I did not want to be followed but because I did not want to find my way back again.
|
2585158
|
The goddamn artist. This was her fourth inquiry, first visit. Her eyes fluttered shut as she leaned against the cold porcelain.
|
258552
|
It couldn’t be a worse time for failed novelist Robert Grayson. He’s 40 and falling apart. He’s balding and accumulating a gut. His job writing technical manuals for software looks like it might get cut. Then his wife does the unthinkable and files
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258476
|
In a plush leather chair, / high up a shiny skyscraper,
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