2611 8 3
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Figures are a strip tease.
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2609119
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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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260996
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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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26081315
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Love is always going to be all even when all else is
floating to the burning ground.
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260788
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Public voice when he's tense.
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26062118
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One day a woman, one of several translators at Ellis Island, asks him why he has changed a passenger’s name from Checzowicz to something else.
“The name was too long,” he says. “Ten letters.”
She replies, “But you didn’t change O’Shaughnessy, and it has
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2606129
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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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26065727
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She sits at home, on the floor of the kitchen, bathing her stuffed animals in molasses to match the ones on the news.
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260521
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“He had emerged from slavery, -- not the worst slavery in the world, not a slavery that made all life unbearable, rather a slavery that had here and there something of kindliness, fidelity, and happiness, -- but withal slavery, which, so far a human aspiration…
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26054121
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My eyes became purple, and boys called them "picture windows". Well, not boys, exactly, but one girl did. Junie.
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260532
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We are the generation who tattoo our stories on our bodies, who pierce what appears impenetrable; we fly our scars like pennants.
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260551
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'That November I washed
my hair with rabbit's blood -"
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260453
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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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26032217
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I stare, out a dirty window, / into the sanitary blackness.
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2603197
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"The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.'--Nadine Gordimer Other things do matter just as much of course. Of course they do. Hey I'm still kind of alive inside this poem here. At least I'd like to think so, so yes another…
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26032013
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"For God's sake," my mother said. "There could be anthrax in the candy."
My mother worried about me going out on Halloween.
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2602179
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I have been mother
to a hundred soldiers,
holding their hands
barely knowing
their names
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260198
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I'm afraid to find out what my spirit animal is
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2601125
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“How much is stuff worth? Stuff man! Bling! Cargo! STUFF! What's it worth to you? It ain't worth a shit, man! Clean clothes! Comfortable shoes! A ride! Those things are important! But they’re only stuff.
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2601149
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You can't always get what you want, and fortunately, that's sometimes a good thing.
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260172
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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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2600143
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He hunched low and forward on his bike, his 14-year old self, flying down the dusty back roads of this Great Midwestern Land, his head full of the smell of the algebraic girl he sat behind in math class just hours ago.
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260094
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I hate walking into restaurants and cafes by myself to meet someone. I always feel awkward, as if no one will claim me. I'm hanging on the threshold now for an agonizing few moments scanning the room until I see my friend.“Hi!” she says, waving her cup at…
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2600179
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When Ryan isn’t around, those of us who know him lament that he peaked at 17, at Disney World.
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25991413
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The patient people who work with the insane are not my kind of people. They are too entertained by the oddness of the inmates and act with a superior sense. I, on the other hand, am odd myself, searching for adherents to my view. The inmates knew me as such and agreed…
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259784
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I'm Icarus in Brueghel's painting. My wings as it turned out were made of wax. Mothers, tell your daughters this truth. You cannot fly so close to the sun.
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25973513
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She walks through the house she’d bought. The filth and the stench of mould nearly make her retch. Dead fleas line the windowsills, the dressers, the floors.
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2595126
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It’s about 4:30 when the phone rings. I look at the display and see it’s home.
“Hey,” I say picking up.
“I hate you,” says Jules.
“I hate, you, too,” I say. My co-workers don’t even blink. They’ve heard this before.
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259499
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Matilda went wild at sixty-five. Legs left unshaven for the first time in fifty years, hair still and proud, knotted with forgetting. She’d roam the streets at night, a traveler without design. Matilda was a gardener of sorts, digging up all previous assu
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259421
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Simon Ridley only had one special power. Whenever he walked into a room, an awkward silence would descend.
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