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Rechargeable Batteries

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Was he really a Secret Service guy? No time to think now! Quick as lightning, Rachel bounded over the sleeping matron and sprinted up the aisle.

Cranshaw Engages in Debate

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They were discussing reincarnation, what animals they would come back as. "I'd be a vole," Cranshaw said. Is a vole even an animal? Connie asked.

in defense of assholes

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No excerpt for you.

Building Houses Out of Words

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I remember sitting there on the first unfinished rooftop, watching you building houses out of words. You hammered in grammar and punctuation; you said these things needed to be hammered in by hand. You drove the long straight exclamation …

Divers

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and, once in a rare while,/ actual pearls.

Conspiracy

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I was convinced that enemy bombers were on the way.

OUT ON THE EDGE OF VICTORIAN CIVILIZATION

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Lottie was a slim, fine looking woman. But Dale thought her breast implants were the worst case of overkill he had ever seen.

Things Like This

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I'm an older guy. She is still quite young. I tell her I may be too old but she giggles and tells me that she did the research and it said because there is snow on the roof doesn't mean no fire's in the stove. She proved it. Things like this. We excite ourselves,…

Great Books of the Western Bedroom

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Artie Shaw gave Ava Gardner a reading list in preparation for their honeymoon that included The Brothers Karamazov, The Origin of the Species, Das Kapital and The Magic Mountain.

A Philadelphia Story

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In the summer of 1963 I went to Philadelphia to study with a member of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Richardson

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What is golf?

Blind date

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“I'll have the Ribeye cooked medium rare,” says Bill, who looks over at Julia, blonde hair and disarming smile, and he thinks that she's not bad for a blind date. He doesn't like the way she butters her roll, however, and it agitates him that she spreads…

Apathy.

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I'm not sure whetherI drink to numbthe pain or toactually feelsomething.

The Bachelor's Hymnal

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OhYou like quiet nights in?I do tooBut we might not get alongbecauseOnly part of youwants silence

Teeth - Yet Another Obsession

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The teeth I want must hold significance. Like the quote, “it’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey,” for me, it’s the connection that I’ve had with someone and the story behind the lost tooth that interests me.

Physics 101

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The cellar smelled like an aroused muskrat.

The Shopkeeper

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His eyes are closed yet restless, as if too many thoughts loop beneath the lids.

I Am Not Like All The Rest: Funny Lines From Online Dating Profiles

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After becoming single at age 62, I joined an online dating site. After a year of perusing profiles and meeting men for coffee, staying single is starting to look better and better to me. But I've stayed on the site, in part for the pure enjoyment of…

Unexpected Flying Objects

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Meanwhile it was four o'clock in the morning, Pacific time. Seven o'clock eastern. The cat was busy chasing imaginary mice around the hammock—at least Manuel hoped the mice were imaginary. He loaded the next digital images onto the screen. It seemed to

God's Personal Microphones

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This is my melody. I will not shut it down for you, it will do that all on its own. Everyone knows this. I don't need you to go on holiday. Can't really get away from yourself. This is my color guard. It goes with the everything I am. I'm not sorry I grew…

Ashes to Ashes

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Day by day people went missing. Reports of the ads being answered with a robocall solution to their problems were at first unconfirmed. Yesterday my best friend told me his emotional distress call was going to be channeled into a free trip to what he call

Everything that's Gone Wrong, has Gone Wrong Because of Football

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I’m not ready for football. I’m not ready for it, but I live in a southern town that worships at its altar more devoutly than those suicidal beauties in James Wright’s great poem.

Sunbelt Winter Sketches

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Sunlight and the small wind/ swallow the frost/ on rooftops and windshields

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

Twelve Pens

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Their last story

Untitled Haiku from Japanese Game Show by JANEY SMITH

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It's a haiku. It's its own snippet.

Meet Cute

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This had the unintentional effect of me picturing her in a tight white top and tiny orange shorts. From up close like this, I had clearly misjudged her earlier. She could definitely be more than the quirky best friend in my movie.

Five Million Yen: Chapter 74: Coda

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It was the first warm day of a late-arriving spring. Ben was sitting in his divorce lawyer’s office on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan.

Hogging the Lady

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She was not the usual member of the band, not the girl nextdoor, not next to any door, not a regular housekeeper or woman. She was a ditch digger, a pied, circular piper, a mouse hugger.

The Last Warrior

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His wings, like tiny shoots, grew a season in an instant. The pain was gone now. He rose up as effortlessly as centaurs run, as angels fly. "I will sing your name as my brother among my brothers," the Seraph promised. Kladius watched the beasts below