1344 4 4
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On a street-lit night in Jeddah.
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1344103
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My sixth grade teacher used to tell us all the time about how being poor is nowhere near the same as living in poverty.
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134442
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Lorelei was bombarded constantly with it. She began to hate the city...
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134400
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The young man pulls out his wallet, grabs a couple of bills and stops short of handing them to the bedraggled man. “So how do I know you’re not going to go out and buy some crack with this money?”
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134411
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Everybody knew the McDonald’s at the Waterfront was selling theraflu stamp bags, and I guess I’d heard how bad it was for you—they’d had reports of dumbasses ODing on channel 2, 4, and 11—but it was a lot stronger than regular heroin and a lot cheaper...
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134451
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There was no provision for keeping the post on the door, but I did not have the fingernails to pry it off.
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134433
|
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1344126
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"You gonna be old before you're old," my father had told her.
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134444
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The wooden man came to her in a cloud in a vision in a dream in a story. When he spoke, his tongue clacked against his teeth.——As soon as she woke up, she knew the wooden man was in her belly. She felt heavy with him, fatigued. All she wanted to eat was…
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134410
|
Hoo-ah! I love these open mikes, I get a chance to pour it out, this… whatever it is, this passion, all this love from I’ll never know where, and then, and then, sometimes, too much hate. Everything’s like all zowie!—splashing scarlet and purple,
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134463
|
Whenever trees or limbs fell in isolate forests—well, no narrators were ever to be found, not even beneath the larger tree trunks or under the fallen limbs.
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134400
|
I felt the most afraid I’ve ever felt in my life, like all the unknowns in the universe were rushing through me at once.
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134421
|
My father had a terrific argument with his wife, my stepmother, a flaming harridan with a voice like hydrochloric acid, and insisted on driving me back home to California.
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1343127
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She has dwindled for the better part of a year, staved off her period, breasts and hips like a warrior. Chestnut strands that danced along candy apple cheeks now surrender to metal pins, her bun severe as an old maid's. Her prominent ears…
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134342
|
Before I grew used to it
I would wake to the sound
of the Amtrak whistle
echoing down along the tracks
behind our trailer park
and wonder who was hurtling where
through the dark night and across
this wide Illinois prairie
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1343910
|
When the dark shadows of his limp eyes told us life was slowly seeping away, stolen by his stroke, his wife signed the “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” order and, tearfully leaving the room, she turns, asking a final question, “Think a needy family could use his…
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134376
|
The faces of the sun remain unaltered across the
seven day forecast.
I am sweat-glued to a poem, looking up at the
wall-mounted TV in a diner in the Valley
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134366
|
With their brightly-colored bits of
found string
woven into the walls of their nests
to teach their baby birds
what the worms of the future
will look like.
Somewhat like the
cave paintings of Lascaux
for early man in France,
when hunti
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134363
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It is midnight in Utah, but I can’t tell. It always looks like midnight in a cave.
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134351
|
They come in my room without knocking and I'm nekkid.
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134322
|
The young boy sat on the swing, hearing sirens in the distance. The tops of his shoes were dirty. His fingers as well, where he drew stick figures of people in the dirt. His…
|
134397
|
I remember the living room heater
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1343103
|
I am confused by your new paper-doll look, btw. Could you please look regular again by Thursday?
|
134353
|
Before the railroad tracks are blown off by the wind, the wall tiles morph to trace 34th Streetwhile a silver balloon emerges from the end of the tunnel. A child’s hand reaches out for the gleam and she, the woman in a black-dress with a mandarin collar,
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134200
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Long ago, this painter Brussegem had hung the dark mantle of Outcast Artist” over his shoulders—and over his life, he formed a strict philosophy—Art and Only Art—and protected his solitude and artistry with all his moody might,....
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134211
|
Ten-year-old Bobby Akins learned that a shotgun shell struck on its brass end with a hammer can indeed take out the left eye of an eight-year-old brother observing the proceedings close by.
|
134233
|
Tell me everything about yourself, if I could care, I can pretend, let me pretend.
|
134210
|
Read signs sometimes and you just might get where you're trying to go. When Eddie suggested they stop for a Whopper, Dennis said no. "Fuck Burger King, man. Let's get that Wendy's up there." They got…
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134241
|
The capsules tumble around, one of them plinking against the crown in my upper-right jaw. I hate the crown… a mute reminder of the first time Brad hit me. Swallowing the capsules, my tongue probes the left side of my mouth, finding the other two crowns…
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134262
|
I was, so I was told, the product of much hard work and a lot of invasive procedures. Initially, I'm sure my parents were making love, but then came the slog, the repeated failed attempts at getting one of mother's millions of eggs fertilized. Those tadpoles just couldn't…
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