2607 7 2
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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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2607126
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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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260654
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O’Malley imagined the blissful, narcotic innocence of Toby’s world where soft-shell crabs crawled into people’s mouths and hummed a happy tune as they were chewed and swallowed.
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2605158
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When you return home, one year to the day that you left us, you will wonder if you can do it all over again.
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260454
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my exposed
flu-ridden head
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260499
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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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259987
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A brief commentary on the uselessness of endings.
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25993114
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25983720
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Make cartography with your mouth...
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259722
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It's the way an earnest five-year-old boy pronounces every single letter as he whispers. Something about octopuses, something else about peas.
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2597187
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This is the only time she feels she can be herself.
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259675
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I think they've always been together, talking amongst themselves about whatever is happening around them. A part of me wishes they'd walk into the cave and disturb whatever is burning it from the inside out.
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259632
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But there’s a special place in my heart for Richler’s tour de force of a novel, his grand finale, Barney’s Version. It has everything — humour, a whiff of mystery, poignancy, a suggested reading list for a literary illiterate like yours truly, the Falstaf
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259663
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We buried her upright, in the stance of warriors.
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259532
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The pieces of bread dipped us humans in cheese,
the cheese made by cows from our milk.
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259500
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“Ah, there’s the Tasmanian tiger,” the visitor says in an American accent, maybe midwestern. “It’s called a ‘thyracine,’ right?”
“Thylacine, yes.”
“Un huh. Thylacine. Extinct now, isn’t it?”
“Oh! Let’s hope not
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25941712
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25942321
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The debits and credits of life have been recalculated. You are not due tax; you are owed a trapeze. It turns out you have a natural gift for hanging upside down, knees to the clouds.
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259460
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2593176
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The Boys The Boys, they call my brothers in the neighborhood, or Those Boys. The Taylor Boys. Sometimes, Mom calls them Thing One and Thing Two, like in The Cat in the Hat. Those bad boys. Nobody has brothers like my brothers, kicked off the school bus, barred…
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259200
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That I own one of the world's largest collections of occult references, including a clutch of rare and ancient grimoires, ought to suggest I'd have been prepared for the shock. But nothing in my studies left me meaningfully prepared. . .
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25921212
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Columbus Avenue, I’m the tense union of poor city rich city/
gentrification.
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259211
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“I’m surprised you haven’t fucked yourself to death, too,” he added, “given your record.”
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25923918
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Lined up like ghosts on the front lawn, the second-hand porcelain fixtures had embarrassed her.
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25922310
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'Hey, are you supposed to be from a cartoon or something?' said the Grim Reaper. I had to take a big drink before I could reply. I didn't know what to say, so I said 'Could I see your watch, please?' He looked down my dress while he thought about it.
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259111
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The first morning we met—I remember the rain, soft the way I like it—was a series she later attributed as a fourteen-frame sunrise.
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259171
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If you run into my Aunt Lucille, put your head down and keep walking. She knows when a person is going to die. She knows when a fatal disease is heading your way and she doesn't keep it to herself. She told my best friend, Mary Lou Pierce, don't bother
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259072
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I pass the Grief Benches on my way to work. No one is on them today. Last night I saw a couple there, him wet eyed and her with her head down. She scrunched her eyes tight as I passed and I remember thinking she was a fraud. It's alright if you don't want
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25891311
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Her mother dressed her like a little girl would dress a doll.
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258900
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The water burst into droplets of rain and fell on top of her. Chisame laughed out loud, a joy that overwhelmed her as she repeated this feat over and over.
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