2258 9 5
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423 days.
The old man still possessed the child-like habit of biting his lower lip when he wrote. The thick skin as dry as pork rind. He recorded the days without rain in a spare, makeshift almanac. The pages waxened from the soiled press of his hand
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22582417
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22562625
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There's no surcease from heat, no "cool of the evening," like the songs say about summer in the South. Those songwriters sat under fans in the Brill Building in downtown Manhattan.
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2256106
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If you could look out to either side of you, you'd see the signs. Restricted Area, Danger Keep Out.
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22552113
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“What sort of truck was it in Texas?” Carlisle says.
“Small as truck goes,” Mill says. “Smaller than a full-size pick-up.”
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2255217
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I didn’t like her. I like the name. You know I hate that name. I always thought you were funny. Maybe even more than you were mean.
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2254136
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But she didn’t look up at him when she said it. He should’ve known better. This is why he’s walking the streets of her hometown in the middle of the night. Too skittish for sex, so he left in frustration, she in tears. He sighs, looks up, and sees t
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22533116
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I don’t remember the name of the boy in high school
or if I cried at his funeral
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22531712
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The sea dies where a cello torques on sand, leaving me without its compass. An old clock sings.
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22532313
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We met an old friend and his old dog. We went off leash on the lush Buffalo grass. He and I—this old friend, I mean—talked mostly of divorce, something we shared between us.
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22531914
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I’m in the Grand Central Station bar-- the one at the top of the stairs-- waiting for my husband to enter so I can watch him. The bar is crowded, everyone getting in that last beer before heading back to whiney children and tired spouses.
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2251128
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Like a small meteorite, a white cloud falls. The journey seems to have been long since it cannot spring up again, its wings being exhausted. Like a scared and shivering bird, it curls into my hand. Its apparent fragility prevents me from tightening my grip. A unique…
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225052
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Rowan’s arm burned and throbbed like the center of a neutron star as it went critical for minutes turned inside-out like hours. Standing in a wall, then huddled underneath the couch, she danced around the rim of consciousness, ripping at the seams of her
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22501311
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they’d been pumping him
with Dilaudid at night,
to adjust his palette for what was
coming, in the soft lamp light he
watched his long fingers sprout pink
caterpillar fuzz, knuckles morphed
into hinges for Monarch butterflies,
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22481213
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Tomorrow the authority smashes. Tonight we march, splash, carve letters in wet paint from room to room until steel blades bend. The letters will tilt in shadows gliding over the walls to mask our tales born of fractured wrists and the ghosts, our keepers.
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22471513
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and all the trees are holding/their limbs up in prayer/and rain is mating with soil
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224797
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Poetry is my rebellion/
against being what I’m not.
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22472321
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The night was a lilac bowl of darkness
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224637
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Their wedding gift to us was a night out with them and tonight was the night. But, you see, Rali and Kate had so much more to offer us than we could ever think to register for. They were giving us an exclusive guide on how to live as an up and coming coup
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224563
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like the sky opened up and showed me a palace above the clouds. he told me he has traveled south beyond the black sea, to constantinople where the ocean is clear green
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2245117
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Wrapping Kevin It was his last…
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224551
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He didn't think there would be girlish confidences, hopes, dreams but he is shocked, appalled, by the little boys aging at ten-speed, already wizened old men ready for cancer and heart attacks with toy trucks in their hands, skeletal women beloved by men
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224431
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There are gestures, unmarred by the words put to them after all has failed. When Y. stopped you from talking to apply lip balm to your dry lips. Or she sidled up to you to read what you had written for her. When you lay on the grass together she put her head on…
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22431814
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224300
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A five-star, world famous hotel nearby even had a new fence put around it recently, to keep out the riff-raff. That would include me. The hired help. A gardener.
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22432217
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I stare, out a dirty window, / into the sanitary blackness.
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22413414
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I loved my Dad. He was executed in 1967. He was guilty.
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2241103
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Johnny puts another whiskey in front of me. Except for him, me, and Petey, the bar's empty. "You hear about that up in Wilmette?" he asks."No, what?" I say."A cougar. People say they saw a cougar.""Bullshit.""No shit. Was in the Sun Times this morning.""Sun Times ain't…
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22402022
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On the way over, on the ship, I met a girl from Cleveland.
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224000
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Gerald's law practice wasn't new. He'd worked on the law review and finished near the top of his class thirty years ago. After earning his J.D., he'd gotten a master of law in taxation. His favorite cases required researching legal precedents, and he…
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