2531 17 14
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my foreign mouth embarrassed the teachers. my jumbled words gave people sad faces. so wrong these words of mine. even the mentally retarded girl would not talk to me. just looking at my garbled mouth made her slap herself. and my writing. oh no. my writin
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2529106
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So when they shake a finger, when they yell, she remembers Miss Whalen saying, “It’s not for keeps.”
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25282822
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I felt/
no need to show what I had made/
to anybody else.
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2528119
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Cherry was America's least favorite pie. Her mother made it every year for her father's birthday because "daddy doesn't like cake." America had to wash the bowls, the wooden spoon, the plates and finally the Pyrex dish. Her brother got to "contribute" by climbing the tree…
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25271311
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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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252793
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Back when Richard was still skinny and mean, we fought at The Island. He broke a pool stick over my head. I bruised more than his ego. We fought over a woman, as always. We were best friends and that’s what we did.
W
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25251213
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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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25252417
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25243517
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She said this is our abode and it sounded like a warble and she made a sweeping gesture with her arm and the boy started to cry.
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252363
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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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25233714
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I should have created a first-date questionnaire heartaches ago.
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252361
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“Your children are beautiful,” she said, handing back his wallet after removing several bills. Her mouth was fringed by bitten-off melon lipstick, a calm kind of mad. She told him to call her Sally, “like the song McCartney rips his lungs on.” She…
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252254
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On the Rocks What matters these, to all, below the crest… If privilege of mind-blankness is the bay's? Remembrance breeds no fathoms of its rest- As plumb the circuit lulled, at each rephrase Of capture,…
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252221
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I looked up “tupping.” It doesn’t have anything to do with Tupperware. It’s Old English for screwing. Just like a professor–make something harder so you’ll get it wrong on the mid-term.
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252296
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Sorry Glenn Gould, I said, but our princess is in another castle. After that, Glenn and I went to an all night diner and ate scrambled eggs.
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252251
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'That November I washed
my hair with rabbit's blood -"
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25212012
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I'm Alice invading the garden,
looking for souls among cards
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252153
|
That was the first time I went over the wall. No bird opened its mouth to chirp. No wind blew. I staggered a little on the stony edge.
And dropped down. I changed in a cafe. Shaved. Emerged as that rare thing: a new man. My clothes were old, saved for
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252172
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Once upon a time, a young writer decided to leave his home in Iowa City, and seek wisdom in the East.
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252196
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In the evidence of broad daylight, in the secrecy of darkness, in drizzling rain that teased the embers, Annabelle worked hard.
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251944
|
Tonight the autumn air is clear and still. There is no frost to compare to moonbeams; no wind carries lotus fragrance or rustles maple leaves.
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25191914
|
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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25183418
|
But I do not dig graves, only cradles...
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2517117
|
"They called him a syllannibal: a person who eats his own words. The only words he ever ate, however, were the ones he had written."
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251475
|
1) Tragicomedy set to drama is what the American public fears and abhors. But it's reality, and reality can be subject to the rifling burden of…
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25141210
|
'This dude’s whole life must be in this book. It’s like, a man diary.' The thought makes her laugh.
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2514129
|
One rainy day I walked to an out-of-the-way section of town where the buildings were old, and the streets were cobblestone.
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25131611
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Walking in to work from an unfamiliar direction, I saw her, on a street I had never been down before. I was coming from his place, for the first time, after the first time. The first time, but not the first date. That's not me. I'm not one to... not one who... He worked…
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2513107
|
Every dive bar has a Max. Max is an elderly man. He wears a dented ball cap. He sits at the end of the bar, right along where it curves and then slams into the wall. You may find it cliché, but when Max enters the room, the patrons actually announce, “
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251356
|
He is snoring inside the silo of his throat. The inside there shines golden but that’s not the truth. There is something caught below the gold.
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