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It comes to me at night, the monster. I don't even realize it's in the room until I hear it breathing behind me. It reaches out its hands and places them on my shoulders. Its fingers are furry and soft, but strong. They grasp the muscles on either side of my neck, and I…
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135822
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You have such a complicated mind /
for refusing to believe in God /
just like any damned liberal /
whose fingerprints /
crowd the faces of a thousand /
dollar bills /
being passed around your great nation...
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135832
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I asked him his name and here’s the kicker, Leiby. It means lion.
You know what? I said mine is Levi, how do you do.
That means to accompany—like in the root of the word, it’s got that meaning.
As in levayah, funeral in Hebrew. Does that only
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135844
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Jenny was certain nobody saw her when she took the slinky shirt from her father's store. It was blue with buttons shaped like cherries, the fabric light as air. She balled it up in her hand. Her father owned a chain of boutiques called Body Electric. The racks were…
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135862
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And she was thinking of him, right now, at this very moment, scurrying like mad, desperate and frantic like in those dreams where you’re late and trying to get somewhere but can’t, not wanting to blow this opportunity...
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135833
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She calls me by my name. She says I am her daughter.
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135899
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She said, "Tonight let's talk of things untrue and he said, ' Like black is white and night is day and up is down and in is out?' and she said, 'Yeah, those things we know to be false for sure like you know, like...well, you could say, 'I really love you' and I could say,…
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135852
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—Now that’s a hell-of-a-painting, Frank, he said. Those colors are engaged in warfare. How the hell did you do that?
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135802
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We’d told her that Kasey waitressed. We talked about it a lot, trying to figure something out. I wanted to be honest with her. Kasey said she was too young to understand. I said that was why honesty wouldn’t hurt anything. Kasey said what about later.
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1358108
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The first night I met her we slow danced to George Strait songs for most of the evening and when we took a break, our talking went warm and well as we sat eating hot dogs and sipping beers until she dropped a couple of bombs, first, telling me she was married and then, that…
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135800
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“Okay,” I say, “but my point is the only way you’d ever know if someone really loved you is if they put their life on the line when it counts. Otherwise you gotta take their word for it.”
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135811
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an elongating boy with butter-yellow flecks in his eyes, and skin patched like a tabby.
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135821
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She’s always had one foot on a pedestal and the other in a gutter.
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135831
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'Every raindrop sounds different.' says Barney. He's bouncing along beside his mother, twisting in her hand like warm milk. She looks down at his Big Bear hat and tugs. They wait together at the edge of the busy road. 'How do they sound?' 'Zzzing.…
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135894
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William Shakespeare (a surname that meant "wanker" back in the day, by the way)
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135801
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Laurel's new bike is powder blue, with silver tassels on the handle bars. Jenny's mouth actually waters at the sight of it, as though it were a fresh loaf of bread or a perfect, juicy orange. “You can ride it if you want,” Laurel…
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135844
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A rope is cleaner,
he explains with a straight face.
He's calmed by the visual.
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135755
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When he leans back from the telescope through which he had been looking, he sports a derby and a Hercule Poirot moustache.
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135700
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Azure took the paper and read it herself. She wondered about those four mysterious beings that communicated with her.
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135700
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Rome and Carthage wage war as Hannibal crosses the Alps and invades Italy. With him, he brings an army of barbarian hordes hellbent on reducing Rome to ash. For one young Roman soldier, Gaius, he is trapped between his loyalties to the republic, and to hi
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135731
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No excerpts for you. Next!
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135721
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I was feeling a bit introspective. I was busy in my own mind assembling the history of the place and getting ready for the visit. I was naturally not someone who would cluster up with a bunch of people I had just met and had arrived to participate in this
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135700
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This was the anniversary of the chairs. He would celebrate tonight for the chairs, and the chairs would welcome him.
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13571010
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I dreamt I was raped the other night. Sometimes it was me, that is, and sometimes it was another woman with a dark bouffant hair-do. Definitely outside though and the hulking back of the man was covered by a charcoal wool…
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135753
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This mother, she buys a one way ticket
whenever she visits her three daughters
who have wandered far from the eyes of
her pearlescent knitting needles and tutti-frutti yarns.
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135711
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The dance draws deeper
whirling witches weaving rhymes
The fire spits fierce in the falling rain
soon the spell will spill from secret times
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135782
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He bites and imagines, numbed by want.
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135763
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In that time when the trunk was getting cleared out and when it became only the empty shell of what had once been so important, many things hit the match. She burned an old black negligee, a picture competing with the likes of a Vargas girl and other thin
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135754
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I find myself in an unfamiliar restaurant, its cuisine an uncomfortable pastiche of Croatian, Burmese, Jamaican and leftovers of long ago Sunday dinners in a small New England town.
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135701
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After you started drinking your meals and hating politics I wanted to climb inside, live in your stomach and dissolve. I wanted to make you see, hold you captive with arms stretched, pinned. listen again, swallow…
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