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Crumbling Stones Crush Our Self Esteem

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Jimi and Janis remain fierce and beautiful

Smells Like Burning

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Stanley had a crush on Sarah. They were in Ms. Goldman's freshman chemistry class together fifth period. That day they were working on homework at Sarah's house while her parents were gone. Stanley was in heaven.“Break time!” Sarah woke Stanley from daydreaming,…

Dapplegrey (Where He Lived)

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A short time ago, a man who lived near me got angry. He woke up one morning and torched his house, with his wife and stepdaughter still inside. He drove up I-35 to the Georgetown airport, got his plane, and flew it into the Echelon Building in Austin.

The Nude Pianist: A Novel: Chapter 28

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On Monday, Michiko returned from Cleveland in a foul mood. She called Frank’s studio at three in the afternoon.

Night Of The Ghouls

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The following is a true story. Though it happened 35 years ago, it happened last night too. Everyday a new convert is welcome, a new tapestry begun. A new hunger is born.

Gun Play

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The guy – it’s Billy Krazik - turns and aims at Jamie Stockwell, sitting there calmly as if he’s in the play or something and he takes two to the head.

Picnicking In Mt. Misery Cemetery

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Picnicking In Mt. Misery Cemetery We breathe the damp shade, plum trees shining in a woodland where there are few wrong things I want to remember-- the steel fence of the power company blazing under an arc light is one. On this day of ripening fruit …

20. Smitten

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Your tunamelt cadence / Sank me to ocean floors

A Little Man on a Rainy Corner

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He is sitting in the infinite rain and the water is making him some infinite silhouette

My Stuff

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Crass, vulgar, boorish, impaired, angry, depressed, jealous, regretful.

The Green Glazed Elephant

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The elephant was breakable and I know that my grandmother held her breath every time I went near it, and I was repeatedly cautioned that it was not to be played with only admired. She taught me in her own way, respect for it. She may have commented on the green with a bit…

Neural Tones

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--"Look at us," she murmurs. "Tristan and Isolde without the adultery." --"Well, you can't have everything." --"No? I heard otherwise."

Casualties of War

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When Jimmy – and Frank and John and all the rest – joined up, it all seemed a big lark. Little Mary – she can’t have been more than about five years old – was dead proud her Dad was going off to fight the Germans. I doubt she really knew who the

Bible Stories for Atheist Babysitters

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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…

Parallel Structures

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He gave her his driving range and she gave it back. She didn’t know what a bogey was. Arms akimbo he smiled and licked the China cat by the window.

Gusts

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a girl in a red cap flashes by

Good boy.

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It’s quite simple - don’t move. No fake or feint - just stand your ground. The fixed gaze, the thousand yard stare, hold your place.

things to know about the people parked along the road that runs through Humboldt Park: part 20

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I traced the vein that rose in her temple when she got angry all the way along her body until it ashed out varicosely on her smooth calf.

Metropolitan

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Metropolitan I. Atlantic harbinger of this our swaddled dawn: Mistaking moon's sea sweep for this the frown The sky's plain-countenanced creatures maytimes weep Upon the surface-sundown of our lawn, When gaily surfaced for…

Mothers

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No, no mother’s tenderness: she shows no sign of that … Do you know that she has them make their own bed? No, not the girl: the boys too! Yes, the boys. She humiliates them.

Edward Ogle the First

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Vundabar baclava

Halfsies

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You and she might make love here, next week, and I'll buy my own razor, switch from baths to showers. I shave my legs in my imagination. They, like life, are smooth.

A little bit of babysitting

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Roy Williams was his real name. It had been for the last 15 years. Since retiring from the Firm he’d lived innocuously in an apartment near the Old City walls of Dubrovnik doing the occasional quick job for them. You never entirely retired from the Firm.

Monsters and Me

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Godzilla, Mothra, Kong, Rodan. Most people know these Giant Monsters through the movies. What the majority of the population doesn't understand is, that these are monsters are real. Like the myths of ancient times, these movies are just a way that our

Dina Goes to Belfast

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Dina was a woman obsessed. She had endured a three hour layover in Chicago and another four in Heathrow for this. (The flight she had enjoyed with a few glasses of red and an HGTV show about plumbing that she could watch again and again.) She had staked out this corner of…

Max Beckmann Poem

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the unutterable things of this world

Mr. Feisty Mischievous

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His nervous cackle makes me sick - Oh, if only - Times were different - That knife - Would fit so nicely in his back

Losses in Translation

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One/ can’t always trust the eye and ear// in such matters but what can one do?/ Mistakes will be made.

What He Delivered

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Yellow Cabaret

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Hail the yellow cab the yellow one will do just fine as second condiment to the sun