1315 3 2
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Elaine Aster paced her office trailing a cloud of smoke of cigarette smoke.
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131530
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Goodbye comes in stages. At first you recognize that you will “miss” someone when they are gone. Then you have to accept the fact that they are leaving. And finally accept the fact that they are gone; and not particularly in that order. If only it
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131522
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In the black not dead of night, she gathers them; slowly,diligently placing the cansand bottles into two large plasticbags strung across a long piece of wood; this is her money work. She is small, but her bodyhas the choreography down:sift, search, lift,…
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131585
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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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1314136
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I tell people that we leave out food for the creatures to appease the skunk gods.
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131400
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They are sea scallops wrapped in bacon, grilled with butter and lemon and plated in heavy seasoned cream sauce and served with apricot chutney.
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131400
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TromboneA trombone blusters his waythrough the bright restaurant,demanding to see the chef.He's furious;the prawns have given himsplitnotes.ViolinsFour violins wait for a bus in the rain.The pervading atmosphere of melancholymakes their plaintive scrapings redundant.AxeThe…
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131496
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131421
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The main street has turned into the lowland of dust devils, with the red sun scorching, continuing to serve the living like a giant blood pentacle.It looks like a heathen ritual invoking an ugly looking God with wings or horns, but beneath the whirlwind of rising…
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131422
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A speech that could not have been anything but earnestly prepared, sweated out under a hot light bulb while june bugs thumped against screens, delivered to fellow graduates, relatives, a state senator, the high school principle, and faculty representatives, all seated …
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131454
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cold plunges its lethal chill spade/into the dirt before cold takes the earth/to ossify it stiff with ice/the semblance of cold the semblance of death/said only to be felt this side of the grave.
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131440
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He almost died, but hasn’t been this much alive ever.
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131411
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She lived a good life she told herself. She lived a good life because she demanded little- little materialistic comforts that is- at least this is what she thought- and what she demanded anyway was simple, aesthetic; sophisticated and perhaps even neat. Yes she was a neat…
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131410
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Lately, instead of the images of dreams waking me up, as has always been the case, it is sounds that jolt me awake. The thumps and roars and slithering of creatures unseen. The ghosts that slam cupboards shut. The apparitions of robbers breaking down the front door:…
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131410
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From my office window, I watch the trains roll in and out of the city. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of passengers staring out windows as the train slows, the ones who have another destination. I've been on those trains before, ones that took me far away from all that…
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131400
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My writing career began with sitting around the tree eating Christmas presents.
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131400
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It was an unseasonably warm day in early spring when I first saw the man in the treehouse. The boys had just climbed onto the school bus, the older with shoulders hunched, weighted down with the gross unfairness of his early adolescent life, the younger still scribbling…
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131410
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He trudged up the steep, antique, spiral staircase to his study. Many hours had been spent in the sanctuary of this room, studying, praying, sleeping; however, now his intentions were much different.
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131420
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Speaking in tongues
untranslatable,
they move in experimental spacesuits,
uneasy in the other's gravity.
(To say nothing of the difficulty of dancing.)
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131421
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We are nerds. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us bitch.
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131486
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“Outis of Utopia” my found name! / I'll inscribe it soon as the tide goes out.
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131476
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I fancy myself a spy. Unofficial official of the H. O. A. Super secret free agent agent of the Glenwood Homeowner's Association. Even the board is unaware of the work I do in their name, without the faintest utterance of their name. Only the highest of the high, the…
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131433
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One night, I wake and Daddy’s in the bathroom with a hanger in his mouth.
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131400
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When New Guinea's president was a student at UCLA he received an A- in organic chemistry after watching a Joan Rivers Informercial. Each year he tries to re-create the magic of that moment.
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131322
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* — Eligibility conditions apply, no purchase necessary.
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131320
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Keep it quick (and they usually did) and it was simple.
Quick as the walk between their houses, from number 27 to number 33 (odd numbers only), and simple as the alibi.
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131300
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-Serves you right, you double agent bitch, spat Arris.
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131354
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We’ll just choke on all our shit
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131341
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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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131300
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She approached him submissively, face down, eyes hidden by hair that moved with every shift of the current.
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