1285 3 2
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Elaine Aster paced her office trailing a cloud of smoke of cigarette smoke.
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128500
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Sunday Night She wasn't hungry, hadn't eaten for days, wouldn't even touch the food I took time off my fuckin' schedule to bring her myself. I walked through puddles of dirt and dog shit, I did. By the time she opened the door after four knocks, I was drenched,…
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128455
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Obituaries aren’t as much fun
as they used to be.
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128441
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I know what to expect because this has happened before. The darkness, the stench of an unlit match, The leathery sound of old wings flapping and finally that voice made up of feces and dust, ancient and terrible suggesting depravity and painful deaths t
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128430
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From the earth it erupts
Growing longer, stronger, as the sun rises and sets
Days and nights pass, bringing the wind, the rain, the moon, the stars
A place of shelter it becomes
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128421
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Tucker walked the long and lonely stretch of highway in front of him. The loneliness didn't matter; he had his own way of handling that feeling. The walking, however, was wearing away at his mind. How…
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128431
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At school, Joe knew the answers to the questions. He used to jump up onto his desk and wave his arm before Mrs. Gestapo told him he would have to stop or he would go to the principal’s office, where the other kids said that the principal made you pull d
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128464
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It was an autumn day, late in the afternoon, a Tuesday, when the last murderer died. There was no official announcement. Indeed, she and her crime had been forgotten. Pancreatitis, her cause of death. Quite treatable, the cancer. Nothing could be done for the gene that…
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128430
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On my second trip home from the University of Illinois down state in Urbana, it was during our break between semesters, I remember it was a particularly freezing cold and miserable January (1963.) I had a date with Lynda.
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1284126
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Agamemnon and Menelaus were/
complete creeps. Achilles was//
a pompous piece of shit.
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128400
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128433
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The game is set, thirty pound gobbler at the center; brined, browned, and buttered to perfection.
The players take their places around the table: Reagan’s_Disciple and BraBurner38 sit at the head seats, eyeballing each other over a fizzing bottle of dom
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1283108
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Once with the lights flickering....
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128354
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She laughed as she stuck up the word flaccid,
it kept falling down
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128342
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Concrete coffeecake
drumbeat gyrate
Andy Rooney ran a meter.
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128342
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After it is over, I go out into the world, to the café. The flower sellers are setting up their booth outside the glass doors. Classical guitar over the speakers. A soft rain falling. Heads bowed, reading the news. Coffee, croissants, cappuccino. This g
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128300
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For some reason in my daydream he would use the formal “ma'am” to approach me, despite the fact that we were in a swarm of sweaty grunting men in the basement that smelled like feral animal feces and jock straps.
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128310
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“Living rooms,” said the town drunk, “are incapable of emanating.”
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128300
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A few months back, Bob Delaney, the old Black Hole’s man with the plan (and more importantly, the check-signing authority), hired a young new guy named Gary — who had the unfortunate last name, Indiana — as a geriatric nurse at Bufordsville Retirement Com
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128352
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It’s not like I could tell anyone. I hum a song my mother sang to me as a child. A dressed-up soprano to calm the tail I’ve grown.
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128342
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Most of the deer around here have a higher IQ than the hunters.
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1283147
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The fuckers tumble out of the bathroom like clowns from a tiny car. The girl has these huge tits and dark red hair. She rushes past me, smelling like chocolate. A guy's behind her, holding onto the back of her jeans. He's not good looking enough to…
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128352
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Minimalist/realist short-story writer Raymond Carver was fired from his job as an editor of science textbooks because of his inappropriate writing style.
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1283155
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Her captors allowed her the use of the toes of one foot. It was hard to pretend she was numb—as if playing an artic game indoors. With the ball of her foot, she primed the canvas. Her big toe acted as a fan brush, the rest were sable, flat, or pointy. She told…
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128300
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My writing career began with sitting around the tree eating Christmas presents.
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128341
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She found herself suddenly awake at five. She laid there in their bed while downstairs the coffee maker waited for her to press its button so it might gurgle and hiss, filling the pot with wakefulness. The dishwasher waited too, waited for her to throw its latch…
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128310
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Her questions apparently had their desired effect.
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128300
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But the things I do know are the ways we've changed since we'd fallen into each other.
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128385
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I was so high on the not knowing, I thought, you will love me for my confusion. And so I allowed myself to reach further inward than either of us felt comfortable. I imagined a delicious vanilla pudding at the core of my exploration, sweet and satisfying enough for me to…
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128342
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"I like to see your juicy cheeks wiggle."
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