2557 6 6
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My grandfather rode with the Czar’s army. He was abducted from a village in Austria, trained to pillage and drink, plunder and rape, and ride the best horses that could be had. They were given the best vodka and the sharpest swords. They were all just boy
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25571711
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She is cutting his hair. The wind is in her curls. She rises and falls like a sleeping animal. He has removed his shirt. There is a towel around his neck, the smell of spice and banana, the scent of vacations. You are reminded of the time in the beach house in Florida…
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255600
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She stood there with ladylike maturity; her eyes were frightening with an unforgiving look, visible in her tears that pierced the very core of Oryn’s heart.
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2555116
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Last-minute women notice me and latch on, converging in narcotized spirals, old sunflowers twisting towards a fake light. Ugly, used up people, turning like dirty snow, terrified of facing the sunlight alone, of the hour long drunken drive home.
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255552
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his wife had made love to another man,
out of spite or love or to wake him from
his conventional slumber, we never learned.
We were there as a foil,
a first step towards reconciliation,
unction.
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2555299
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TRAVELING NORTH Though you are dead now. Though I walk covered in dust through this strip mall in Iowa. I remember the collection of tendencies that led me here. The flat landscape. The blazing heat of cornfields. The landscape and body are one…
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255412
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I hope I don’t have aches and pains in heaven
Cause here on Earth I ache in all my parts
These old bones don’t have the spring they used to
I sure hope heaven has electric shopping carts
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2551911
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His feet are the size of thumbs, the segments of his toes no larger than grains of rice.
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25452617
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...she lifts one shell, sips a little, then swallows the creature whole.
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254421
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The crowd gathered around the dying man's bed, waiting for his last words.
He was a genius. The most prolific writer and philosopher to ever live. He wiped his ass with the words of Shakespeare. The thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Descartes, and Nietzsche w
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254442
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The proud, burly tree / Rests on the now crashed TV / Thanks a lot, nature
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25431410
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I think he viewed Communion as an act of hygiene that allowed him to go on being fiery and self-determined.
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25432317
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I watch my mother
No longer beautiful or charming
Her left arm shaking
Her mind a gone thing no longer doing her wrong
Wandering away from me in the mall
To kiss the hands of strangers...
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2543144
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Rendine Philips polishes his courage and enters the fray. Not virtual reality, more reality virtuous. He feels the pull and the push. Electricity pulses resistance.
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254321
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He was the kind of cat who began lifting weights in the fourth grade.
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254210
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But she knew what she would find. She knew it all the moment she felt the sticky fingerprints behind the slat of her old oak slay bed. The fingerprints that would only be left from a person grabbing it from behind their head. The fingerprints that she
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254111
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The lard-arsed ol’bastard struggling
soot-faced and yelling. . . .
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25403720
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"And I listened, too, sitting at the table with him with my palms on my chin and my fingers on my face ‘cause I love listening to my man talking about why he loves me."
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25401611
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Their breath stank inside my lungs and tamped down the very minute amount of remorse I had left. It was replaced with contempt. Their fear warmed my cold sensibility as I steeled myself.
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254034
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Days went by as I stood in the woods waiting for a tree to fall, and when none did, I determined the universe is cold and indifferent and that man’s only hope is to buy wood chippers.
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25381210
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honey/she said/with a wink/and a twinkle
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25372817
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If you outlive me, she said, it won't be because I smoke but because of what you put me through when you quit.
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25341211
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"So, like the Goldilocks thing…"
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25342829
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253221
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It was twilight, and the sky was getting darker even as the lights of civilization were becoming more noticeable in the gloom. The daytime city, with its grit and dust and texture, was disappearing. Soon there would only be electric light and neon and the
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25313116
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I don’t remember the name of the boy in high school
or if I cried at his funeral
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2531178
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“You don't know what it's like, to be an old man, to be alone man, behind blue eyes,” he said to the downtown city sidewalk. The sidewalk said nothing. People with someplace to go rushed by him, not stopping.
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252900
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Gerald's law practice wasn't new. He'd worked on the law review and finished near the top of his class thirty years ago. After earning his J.D., he'd gotten a master of law in taxation. His favorite cases required researching legal precedents, and he…
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25281312
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The sign that informs tourists that there is
no access to the Hollywood Sign is the
most ignored sign in all of Los Angeles.
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2528116
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Children should not be made to do things unless they want it.
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