1423 10 8
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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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142363
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My father seems anxious about my gender orientation. I grew up looking like a boy, acting like a boy. He bought dresses and girly stuff for me but he avoided making an issue of it until recently.
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142322
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The Inauguration Day Windstorm had blown out half the downtown lights to celebrate its twenty-first birthday. Two old friends flecked with gray snow and white hair sat on the boulders that kept the Sound from sweeping away Myrtle Edwards Park. Look at all the…
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142333
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Nearly everyone knows of that celebrated poet’s story coming down to us from classical Greek mythology: the tragic tale of Orpheus and his descent into the underworld to rescue his beloved Eurydice. Well, there’s a much lesser known story of a legendary 7
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142344
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Have you ever seen anyone die? It will alter your life. Because you suddenly realize that anxiety was worth something after all, and was a coin of the human condition, imprinted with hectic symbols, some of which resemble cypress, others more like Frankenstein:…
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142321
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His touch, even now, seemed to set off tremors inside her.
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142311
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It matters little who thought of it first, what mattered was the schism. Or, to be more accurate, those on the opposite sides of the schism. And, of course, you are a part of this, dear reader. You are of one side or the other.
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142332
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I advertised in the local paper for a model.
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142300
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Osama couldn’t see any reason he shouldn’t retire. No way he could top BP Oil in the Gulf or Pacific Gas & Electric in San Bruno.
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142264
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just before my break,/ he came on the line,/ old and slow with computers now/ but wanting a discount/ he'd been told he qualified for.
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142221
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"Haven't you ever had some little thing you would rather everyone just left you alone about? I don't like to have my picture taken. Please don't ask me again."
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142200
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What do I understand?
What have I mastered or come to terms with?
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1422108
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One day, my feet and hands got into an argument. My feet argued that they were superior because they were not only the foundation of my body, but the cause of its mobility. They were modest in size, yet supported and transported an entire body that towered over them.…
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1422115
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The smell of garlic, soy, and onions/
exhausted from Skillman Wok/
perfumes December air.
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142252
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The night sky was washed gray by city lights.
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1422113
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142276
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Maybe it was a trick of the gloom.
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142244
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So for now, let the snow fall, but
let it fall gently,
each flake as a soft piano note
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142233
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Who hasn’t at some point of the day wanted to dredge up everything in your pocket just to see what it is.
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142202
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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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142232
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Being an uncredited bonus composition, written in the sublimest access of divine afflatus this poet believes his lyric verse has ever known. “In olden times, dark was not counted fair”: Those were the words, I think, of some old poet. …
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142264
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She stiffens and blusters and roars
Not like a storm,
Not like a lion.
Like a badger, caught in the steel jaws of a trap.
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142200
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The first apartment Troy and Lynn lived in was managed by an alcoholic former army officer, who lived in the complex with his wife and teenage daughter. He was a lush who didn't do much in the way of management. Lynn had barely noticed him before Troy moved in with her.…
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14221310
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This time the bag's bigger/than the boy and the door.
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142200
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Every morning when he wakes, he lies in bed and waits for one of his toes to twitch or spasm; the moment he feels one of them thrust forward, he gains courage to test his legs. He grimaces either way: one more day of walking, one more day until loss, one more trip to the…
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142288
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I attended the burial of our affair when I found the notebook-maybe it should be called her diary-she had foolishly forgotten, leaving it on the deck of my beach house where she stayed while I was on that short trip to Chicago and I was numbed at first, unsure how to…
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142211
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I knew we were going to fail. The night we met, when we got out of the car, I dropped my green glove in that puddle, you picked it up but it was ruined. That set the precedent for our whole life together. You can't look at me anymore. My cigarette…
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142200
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To a tech-savvy millennial, the definition of progress is a hands-free blowjob, and the real number is not how many men you’ve been with but how many minutes you’ve made them wait.
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142243
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In the end nothing could bring him back because I tried. All those weeks and months, yet all I have left are the tears and memories. He said when he asked the final questions to those in charge he was confused.
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142254
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when i was five or six/ we lived in an apartment/ and every sunday/ i'd lie on the carpet/ to watch squares of sunshine/ crawl across the rug/ while my mother inflicted upon us/ a centuries-long hour of television/ worse than any droning mass.
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