1397 7 4
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I remember going out to a restaurant with some guy and a friend of mine who brought her little boy along. And suddenly her boy said, “I want to hear the man talk.” Well, that stopped us. Smart kid, I thought. He was fed up hearing her women friends talk
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139781
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Buck, naked, has no words. The best he can manage is a dopey strangulated cough. His wife, who is clothed, stands before him, next to the waterbed that took Buck half a day to force into the trailer.
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139721
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Okay, I’ll admit it, the earth was shaken on the world's underside, when you left for California. And I sometimes slept on the shores of Lake Michigan and Fox River for your tremendous thousand years’ charisma. To say I cried out in pain would be lettin
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139721
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He turned metal chains to rubber with the force of his mind. He prepared tacos for the paperboy.
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13971714
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After Slick Daddy — aka Billy Ray Thompson — gave up driving his log truck and took up with playing and singing the blues full-time he was what you might call a hot property around the juke joints along Highway 61. The women didn't seem to mind…
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139700
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He ordered a palace built, and the builders came to blows, which is why the father’s eyes have swollen shut, and the oldest son’s knuckles are bright plums.
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139700
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I remember screaming and wanting to run from the living room that time you came home drunk.
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139743
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Need not remember, the 6th of November.
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139723
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As I was reading “Not Your Mother's Book on Home Improvement,” a new collection of light-hearted essays by (primarily) middle-aged female do-it-yourselfers, it became abundantly clear to me that, unlike the women who tell their stories here, I am not a…
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139721
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Jade in the emperor’s death
mouth – to the grave – all openings
closed – no breath – no air – no life
to enter to leave – the end should
be silent – you stop my mouth
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139740
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She had endured three years of abuse for those hot, fleeting moments of tenderness—just enough warmth to keep her second-guessing the bitter frost. Now the ring promised a lifetime of biting back her pain.
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139732
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Lying in the blissful glow of young television.
Idly sleeping, eyes open and ears closed.
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1396126
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Crouching like little children in a game of hide & seek, we entered the old house, slowly
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139642
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By lunch:
The dryer is an F-5 dervish of mismatched socks, blue jeans and your yellowing college T's, lovingly held onto. For a moment there is a comforting warmth and softness to their smell. In the debris strewn landscape of the living room a carcass
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139654
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Writing opens doors to perception. For example, the glockenspiel smells of gardenias, but the catwalk is opening a can of Franklin stove. It emits fumes of fairyland and olive. And in the green and pleasant country of Scotland and England, vintage trains go…
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139610
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He is underneath them. His head is like the head of a worm.
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139664
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I try as much as I can to write but only in as much as you believe―am I successful.
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139654
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I don’t even want to think about Aethra shtupping Posiden and Aegeus
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139611
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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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139621
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The girl lifts my head, and I sit up straight once again. She hands me a pair of old work gloves, helps put them on my swollen hands. She wipes my face with a wet, warm towel. Her thin arms tremble. She cries. I cry.
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139621
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It is just a little break from the colicky baby who has finally fallen asleep. Just a little break, maybe a half hour. And the faulty heater, that wolf at the door, knows that and will take his chance. The two of you are lying on your backs, both of yo
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139622
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the small break of consciousness that is my dreamswaterso much wateri can never forgive the watertoo many tears
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139521
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Where are you going, boy who never was?
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139500
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She was there then gone then there again. We were naked and wet and touching, she let me touch her, but she didn't want to be there. But she was, despite herself. It was my dream. You can go if you want. …
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139500
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The Moon The hatch of the lunar module hissed as it opened, a few puffs of leftover water vapor escaped toward them in a sparkling white cloud that rapidly dissolved…
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1395138
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I took a left, it's less safe
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1395148
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In the evening the curtain recounts its day. Faces, images, incidents it has observed from the window. Its voice is nuanced, modulated, quivering, for it is made of lace. It appears to crochet its words with needle sounds. My eyes, during confinement, are not wide open, not…
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139532
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I spent the evening looking at our old pictures. /
We were never happy. I realize that now.
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139510
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She smiled at him. "You want to know the secret, that's why you want her to tell - not because you want her to be happy."
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139511
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She is walking to the café to meet her friend. Her friend is there already because she walked from where was getting her haircut. Her friend sent her a text message that said, “OMW” for…
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