1240 3 2
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[YOU BETTER BE READY FOR THIS!]
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1240 4 1
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She’s new, with the enthusiasm of a new person. And everyone wants the new girl.
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1240 1 1
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I lost my job but the government found me a new one. Now the government pays me to pretend I’m a travelling businessman. I fly around the country to imaginary meetings. It’s part of a project to make it look like the economy is doing well.
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1240 2 4
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What
I learned/one summer/in the North East/Thessaloniki heat was. . . .
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1240 7 6
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We exist to facilitate/
successful conclusions of hopeless lives.
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1240 7 9
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Used to be I'd keep busy. Dreadful the time I spend sitting, standing, staring. I lose track, now. I believe it's because he died. It gets hold of me. I'll see him half on half off his bed, a plaid blanket angled over his back and legs, held…
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1240 6 3
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On the phone I asked my mother how she was doing.
“I’m getting old,” she said. “Going slow. But getting there. I’m ninety-four!”
My mother was always 94, when she was really 93. I remember she was 93 right after she turned 92. And 92
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1240 3 1
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Little Roy Farrell'd taken a bite of his fourth grade teacher's ear as she bent close to help him sound out the word “grace.” Doc Felter had sewn most of teacher's ear back on, but by seventh grade Roy still couldn't read and never understood that he'd in
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1240 7 4
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I’d look for a fork and quickly stab a piece of it and bite into it, feeling good about the finality of things.
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1240 4 2
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A sizzling as skin and sinew melt, fall away. "Scream if you need to scream, child." And I scream, and her song gains strength. The warmth of her around me. It is time.
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1240 0 0
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I. The cowboy of my heart rides high in the saddle. Behind him, the long tail of his speeding palomino, golden — like the hair to the girls I was later to want so desperately — stands straight out from his sweating, muscular haunches. It's time.…
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1240 6 2
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"What have I done?
What in God's name possessed me?
Confessions of some college trouble in the 60's.
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1240 4 3
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You watch with frigid eyes, as their soggy woolens squelch dark mud, even smiling a little as they make croaking frog-lure noises. You know eventually a toad or two would land in the Frogger. You like the word Frogger.
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1239 10 8
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When you need a vacation...from everything.
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1239 4 1
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1239 9 7
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a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single
ticket
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1239 2 0
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Prayer: Cold prayers in her throat, so far all unanswered. This thing grows steadily, unmistakably, cobbling counterfeit cells and flesh together into an unspeakable mass.
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1239 1 0
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Touch these words with your mind. They will create an elephant with an unidentifiable itch.
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1239 1 1
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She never leaves her desk, but food appears like magic.
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1239 5 5
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Perdita's confusing profusion of parts makes it impossible to know which way up she goes.She flutters beneath the camera's shuttered stare, …
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1239 2 1
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What the five-year-old I baby sit for wanted to do yesterday was torture his Barbies. “Why would you want to do that?” I asked.“Because we're bad guys!” said Hanina. “Can't we be good guys?”“Not today. Today we're bad…
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1239 0 0
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Those in the house don’t notice the sweaty woman on their lawn any more than they notice the Ruger LCP pistol she holds limply in her right hand.
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1239 5 1
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Now that Spring has sprung I am reminded about the day a former neighbour complained about my squirrel collection. I love to feed the black squirrels that gather in my yard and she became convinced I had trained several ninja squirrels to enter her garden
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1239 2 1
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No one knows where the wind comes from, but sure as hell it comes.
The executioner glances round the reception area. Nods to himself. Function versus form. Anodyne, instantly forgettable, like hotel rooms. Perfect.
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1239 5 2
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It's morning, and the cold black hull of branches sets my resting pier, Amid this drizzle, underneath the poignant pain of birches, wrecked By floods of midyear grieving; wraithlike, Dawn's been becked To paint in shafts of faded rose that shades the fen…
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1239 1 1
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I planned and planned. I followed the veterinarians around and I took vials of panda tranquilizers when they were not looking, and it was often that they forgot to look. The earth kept shaking, they were hungry, and many did not know what had become of th
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1239 0 0
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Betty had been looking for a distraction; the lawsuits were out of control. Her last nonprofit, Faith and Life Children's Organization, had run into some difficulties due to the recession and the obvious result of trying to do more with less. Why couldn't people…
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1239 3 3
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His granddaughter, Ivy, sat on his knee looking at an old photo album she found under the couch during one of her afternoon explorations. She made him wipe off the dust and cobwebs before he took her through all the pictures, per normal protocol. The albu
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1238 11 6
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Unless they leave you comatose,/
it’s the disasters you remember.
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1238 8 5
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Every encounter is a dance, every secret has its key
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