1421 0 2
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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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1421 2 2
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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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1421 5 1
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A dead deer on the side of the road and the older boys not listening to her as they stab its eye with a stick.
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1421 0 0
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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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1421 2 1
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His touch, even now, seemed to set off tremors inside her.
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1421 1 1
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Come to the park and swing with me, sing with me.
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1420 1 0
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On Friday evenings they play Scrabble, a whole crowd of them. They use books to keep score, page numbers, instead of a long column of pencil scratches. They organize themselves into teams; the English majors all together, versus biology, history and horn players. She and he…
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1420 2 1
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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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1420 5 4
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Been looking for guns.
His guns have turned up missing.
He’s been looking for the guns.
Looking for guns.
The au-pair must’ve snuck back in
And took the guns.
And the baby.
The baby must be crawling off with
Guns again.
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1420 3 2
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So do you read my writing?I text youI need to know whatyou like betterThe bloodor the gutsThat's what it is.You see Iput it out therefor you.That's not what it saysbut I know the truth.Am I smart enoughgood enoughdo you think it's crapbecause anyone can like it…
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1420 8 6
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At some point we all reach the end point/
of something. Something important/
if only to our fragile self esteem.
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1420 9 3
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Remembering his body makes me think of Egyptian cotton sheets dried in the sun. He smelled crisp and clean even after sweating hard. His hair fell in golden spirals down his cheeks, his back, over his forehead, and captured light just like the gilded halos on…
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1420 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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1420 6 3
|
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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1420 6 4
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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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1420 0 0
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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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1420 13 10
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This time the bag's bigger/than the boy and the door.
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1420 2 1
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He and she are fucking while I watch. She's moaning deep desire and he's pounding flesh into flesh. I'm fully clothed, eyes attune to their fornication, studying. He comes inside of her; their bodies stiffen and then wriggle against one another. …
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1420 4 3
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"You're no good at sex, no good at drugs and, god knows, no good at rock and roll."
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1420 0 0
|
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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1420 1 1
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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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1420 1 0
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I leapt up to retaliate when the clang of a distant door quieted my retesance. Shit, why am I so popular? I guess it was my turn to be thrown around like the guy in the Hotdog suit on the corner... Don't shoot the "Hotdog" guy... Please, please don't
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1419 7 5
|
I learned how to fall in love, in one hour, watching The Waltons. John Boy fell in love with Jenny. Jenny fell in love with John Boy. It taught me the right way to fall in love. It taught me the right way to let love go. I was 12 years old. It was a lesson I…
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1419 0 0
|
What do I understand?
What have I mastered or come to terms with?
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1419 2 2
|
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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1419 10 8
|
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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1419 11 5
|
The smell of garlic, soy, and onions/
exhausted from Skillman Wok/
perfumes December air.
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1419 1 0
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Marcy was not herself today, her mother said when the school called. She was under the weather and she could not play with the other children. Marcy's mother began to suspect that her daughter was not herself very early on that day. Walking up the stairs Dolores…
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1419 0 0
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I should have never gotten involved in such a huge lie. I was a poet, for God's sake, not a novelist. I wasn't used to lying.
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1419 1 1
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A mundane endeavor depicted as a quest. Try it, you'll like it!
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