1311 3 2
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The man was older and had never found a wife. Years of accumulated pain had short-circuited his instincts so that the first time he met the woman, he doubted her. Each time he spoke to her, he felt himself responding, but he wouldn't allow himself to plea
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131140
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New Year's Eve 1984: I was a hit with my outfit. When I walked into the house, a teenage girl looked me up and down and said, “Nice knickerbockers.” My cousins dragged me to the living room floor which was crowded with my family dancing and I started…
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131100
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Try and put my bones back in
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131122
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If she was still breathing, Tom promised himself he would let her live, but right then his shoulder ached and his right hand was throbbing.
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131121
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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 …
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131133
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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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131144
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And if I lived a thousand lives...
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131122
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My grandma kicks field goals between her bedposts, again and again. My finger is sore from holding. She says that's all I'm good for. My finger is smudged with ink from writing my poems on her paper: half-moon rowboats, clouds like whales. She twisted my finger for …
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131120
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My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the
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131110
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One day over a hardscrabble dinner of gristly beef and lumpy mashed potatoes, his uncle looked up at him and said, “Kee-rist, boy, school’s gonna start any day now. And winter ain’t far behind. I can’t keep you here. We gotta figure out something for you.
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131132
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Where were you the night Katrina destroyed New Orleans? Oh, what a night... A week later, most of the city was still underwater, with hundreds or thousands of folks presumed dead, and tens of thousands…
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131120
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"Don't stab me with that," says John.
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131066
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The world has long since been bootlegged by madmen. The new invisible con men are the same as the old visible con men, hiding and lying behind their walls of lingering death. There's a weapon wielding demon hell bent on an insane vengeance crawling around…
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131098
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Over his usual ham sandwich and skim milk for lunch Uncle Waldo used to always say, “Going out in the dead of night without a flashlight is dangerous.” But I knew what I was doing. After dark, I'd slip out and sneaker on down the path to take a dip in a…
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1310117
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Names are forbidden here. So is apology.
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131022
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He sits in the best chair and it collapses so he unfolds himself up like a mechanical shadow and sits in the second best chair.
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131000
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I pat my pocket to make sure everything’s in order; a Starbucks blueberry scone to sustain me, a $50 Brooks Brothers gift card from my in-laws, and my “piece”–a fully-charged BlackBerry handheld device.
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131044
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"How the fucks he drivin' like that?"
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131086
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I'm working through the rocky pine cones so you don't have to. I'm stepping over the little dreaming people in your dreams so we don't wake them with our loud and coming loose footprints. The poem passes by like a heartbreaking train…
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131065
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He doesn't call, not even on her birthday. She doesn't mention it or complain. She knows she doesn't have it as bad as some, even in this privileged Triangle of North Carolina. She is white and pretty and belongs to what's left of the middle…
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131063
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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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131010
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Wile E. Coyote? A junkie strung out on bunk dope.
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131011
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sometimes we saw it in the sky. we'd stand on invisible stairs trying to reach it. running like frightened geese. we were going to catch up with it. grab onto its string. pull it down.
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131000
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She dropped the bundle of faggots she had collected and spun around with her mouth open.
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131032
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"I'm just going to
take a power nap!"
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131010
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Sometimes, to be sad, you don't need tears.
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131042
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I give you the rattle of the rattlesnake. I give you a daub of creosote. I give you the metaphysics of glue.
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131000
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It is your hamsa that protects us,” the girl whispers to me.
“Then I shall give it to you,” I reply.
“No,” she says in the unselfish innocence of her youth. “It is yours and you must keep it.” I smile and kiss her dirty forehead. Eternity passes whil
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131021
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For the sake of convenience, we must assume that everything ugly is evil. Lightning rejuvenates. Sulfur preserves. The obvious solution is dismemberment. The ghost appears to Ludwig; “How can you destroy my creation?”
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131084
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We may think about so many things and thoughts about rain. We may think about where it is going, where it comes from.
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