1299 4 1
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When I was younger, I tried very hard to be myself, but it never worked. I'd close my eyes, wait a beat, open them and slowly bring them into focus. This is the new me, the only me. Never worked, not once. It could only last a minute or two, so I…
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1298 2 1
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In his tiny fist he held the world
In his other his mothers hand
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1298 3 1
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“The King,” he paused, pursed his lips, looked across the crowd of eager and fearful citizens of Ki, “is dead!”
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1298 1 1
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I first saw her about a year after I moved back, when I went to Dairy Queen. I know. Dairy Queen!? Ever since I was a kid, I have had a love for the dipped cones. When I used to visit my father on weekends, we would always stop at Dairy Queen on the way back to…
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1298 4 3
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"...she became aware of
her cold saliva
dripping slowly over her bare
arm muscle,..."
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1298 2 0
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The next post card was of gondolas in Venice. “Have never not enjoyed ourselves less,” wrote Sylvia.
“Sylvia can be hard to please,” said Angelynn.
“Those boats could use a coat of paint,” I said.
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1298 10 3
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They're haunting me with every spotting. They're convincing me they'd be the unexpected blessing. They're confusing me when I look at my already-children, taking on the shape of this one's face, that one's gestures. We've been…
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1298 7 7
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I could put on some music, but it just pushes me further away from you, so it seems. It takes me out far beyond the safety breakers and then reintroduces me to my own splashing two-fisted fear of swimming. You can swim through …
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1298 2 1
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‘what’s the hassle kiddo, chopping meat is fun, come here and listen to the music of the chop, the sound of steel ripping through air, slicing through flesh and hitting wood, poetry I say’.
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1298 2 1
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Up ahead I saw clusters of people standing silently under the trees. They seemed to be just waiting there. More than 100 people lined up in the cold and dark, not moving.
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1298 4 4
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“I'm in love,” Satan said to me cheerily. I could tell he was in a good mood. He was whistling as he came up my sidewalk. There was a spring in his step. He carried his mail tucked under his arm.“I'm in love,” he said …
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1298 4 2
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One evening I came home late from work to find my wife drinking white Zinfandel by the fireplace in the living room and reading Wallace Stevens poems out loud to the dog, curled at her feet.
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1298 12 9
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...it was moving toward me from an oblique angle somewhere behind, steadily, relentlessly.
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1298 9 8
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He prided himself on being not menacing like a bear.
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1298 2 2
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Most of Carl’s neighbors considered him a lone taciturn man at best and an eccentric loony at worst. His neighbors knew him as the guy who left his house every morning at eight dressed in a suit and tie.
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1298 9 7
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Mark Reep is that stepbrother you had a thing for, the one who turned you onto Steve Vai, Stoli.
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1298 0 0
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“Got a big one boy! He's movin' real fast! Don't think he has had time to eat the bait just yet, so we need to play him out. Let the hook set. Don't want to loose him! Get the net ready!”
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1298 11 5
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She stepped inlike ice alonecould save hershe dived,slicing the wavewith her body her fresh pony tailsubmergedlike a silk scarfthen swam moving thewater awaylike whirlpoolscould hold her buoyantly save her from the headachewhispering wordsThey had been there all…
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1298 4 4
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It began the night my parents took my brother and I to see The Vikings at the drive-in and the trailer for The Girl Can't Help It came on the screen, introduced by the completely acceptable Tom Ewell, which the folks could swallow, he was one of them, but as soon as…
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1298 10 7
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There were too many laws but not enough of the kinds she wanted. She wished for the right to go shopping. Then taste rather than disposable income or access to finance could distinguish people.
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1297 2 0
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One day a girl with blond hair was walking along the fence on the other side. There were just a handful of us left and I was the only one to notice her. I watched her. She did not see me. The next time I saw her, I went to the fence. I thought she might y
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1297 4 0
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1297 6 5
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1297 6 3
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Her boyfriend is into U.S. presidents and professional wrestling. He is reading biographies of both occupations and says this helps him to appreciate gray area, decisive action. Lives of great men, he explains.
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1297 5 4
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But there it was, amid the “junk” set to be thrown out with the rest of his childhood, opened accidentally to the page of his Indiana Jones Action Journal about his winter formal when he was sixteen.
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1297 3 2
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"I’m wearing a white sundress with little strings tied at the shoulders, sheer white panties, and a lace push up bra." It sounded good, sexy, likable. The kind of outfit a girl he’d fall in love with would wear- if he was prone to love, that is. "That sou
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1297 4 0
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He couldn’t dredge up a single memory about the sex.
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1297 3 3
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Now I hear a woman's voice. It sounds familiar, like I know her, but in my daze it is slightly distorted, like I am underwater and she is calling to me beneath the waves. She tells me not to be afraid. Her words are calming; they soothe away the panic and confusion. I…
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1297 6 6
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I'll still want the blinds open
and the lights on,
to see the papier-mache of our flesh
fighting death away to the century mark,
even if you only want to live until
a ripe eighty-two.
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1297 1 0
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My bones will rob me blind, corpuscle by corpuscle.
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