1257 5 3
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Once, in the past or future, but definitely not in the present, I worked as a transportation minister for a friendly dictator, whose name was neither Hitler, nor Stalin, nor Kim Jong-Un, but whose mustache was toothbrush, whose smile was sardonic to the p
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1257 0 0
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Writing books is like raising children. You do your best, nurture them, discipline them, coddle them, feed them, patch up their injuries, sing to them, try to sell them, but no matter what you do, they are what they are.
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1257 5 1
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As a kid he had run away from the family farm and shoveled coal back East to put himself through college. Now he was just another old man in a nursing home, desperate for a drink, his blue eyes bleary, a sticky goo filming at the corners of his lips.
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It's a funny thing, watching a Snowman shiver
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She's not a poet, but does she have to be? She comes to the reading to read the poems of her recently dead husband, for she made a vow: that she would read his work at an open mic. Now she is keeping her word. It's her way of keeping him alive or maybe it's his way of…
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this is your hair, this is your stare, this is your voice
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NO ONE CAN BE A BASTARD FOREVER
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Eat the Body/
Drink the Blood/
Perfect the sacrifice,
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Most keep their eyes closed. Some look up at the cloud covering the kneeling ecclesiastical trash perched high. Others look around, overly warm.
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whenever i see youit feels like birds are flyingin and out of my facemy head is ghost-like and birds flythrough iti want to hold the birds insidemy head and turn them intosex maniacs
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Over the last years of her life, my mornings began when Mom decided to play. Sitting on her black, ball-and-claw stool, she'd raise the key cover, stretch her neck and shoulders, and take slow, deliberate breaths. A deep, meditative state descended over the room and…
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I even listen to the Ugly Kid Joe version. I fall asleep perplexed and disheartened.
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The moon bulges with meticulous sick amber fire while first night’s chest heaves and sputters free infantine monstrosity from plague-wormed hovels, din mold choked grottos, and stale metal-cast labyrinth catacombs.
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Hank: Yeah, the way her head was bashed in, it looks like someone really had it in for her. Did you call the coroner?
Bill: Yeah. Boy, you couldn’t pay me enough to do the stuff those coroner and medical examiner guys do. It seems like
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I went back to the Charles Bridge over the Vltava River and felt the plaque of the Wall of Gropers, and that was where we hatched our plan, in front of my ancestors. I could just feel their presence there. They would be with me, the Gropers of Prague.
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Do you see the hot coals of doing? The way time sizzles or wilts…eat those coals.
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1256 7 1
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The sound of a siren approaches his home. His wife asks him why he's so nervous. It's nothing, he says, but he rises from the couch and peers into the night from behind the curtains. The siren approaches relentlessly. The road twists and turns and the sound fades but always…
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1256 3 0
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The last time my old lady threw me out, I decided to go and stay with my brother. I thought, "That's the last place I'll be welcome," and I knew that was true. The drive was calming, which was good, because Steven wouldn't have even let me in if I…
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1256 3 2
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She is not centered, but she finds her way.
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1256 5 3
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while the fat stars stand out in the cobalt night.
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We had imagined making babies with ease, as if they were simply fruit- ripening on the trees around us- and all we had to do is stretch out our limbs and pluck. We never imagined that skill is involved, that heartbreak is required, and that the one simpl
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1256 2 0
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"The rider rode his bike in Arizona just about every day and for all the usual reasons....."
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1255 0 0
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Most women simply don’t want damaged goods. That’s a fact I’ve been brought face to face with throughout my life. It's something you can continue crushing your brains against, like an impossibly high hurdle. At first you take the damage without unde
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1255 1 0
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He, an irregular chap,
Was known for his hat with a flap.
Had fleet feet and a very strong back.
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1255 1 1
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I have a fascination with Dickens and London and this was inspired by my next novel.
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1255 5 4
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Suddenly, the room was filled with a screaming vortex directed at a pinpoint in the corner. Timmy's bureau was gone and everything loose in the room was flying towards the spot it had occupied. Timmy stood up in horror. He tried to seal this rent by tossi
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So we stayed on the train admiring the time.
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1255 12 0
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Your son is six feet tall in the sixth grade. By his sophomore year of high school, he outweighs you by a hundred pounds. He's been offered four football scholarships and one for a sport he's never played. Every morning his mother, your ex ex-wife, makes his breakfast of a…
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