1216 1 1
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The first day of the Steamfitters and Pipewranglers Local 175 strike was exhilarating. Every man (accurate; there were no women in the union) showed his support outside the Willgarden High Rise Corporation's company headquarters on Fifth Avenue, shaking unreadable signs…
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121655
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"Where've you been?" the image in the mirror asked. "I haven't seen you since yesterday," she said.
"Yeah, I miss you too," he said.
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121585
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I ate a tuna salad sandwich for lunch.
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121500
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I glance back over my shoulder as you fumble with the keys. Repeatedly. You swear a little under your breath. You finally locate the proper one and the large door swings open. I hold it as you run over to the alarm keypad. You punch in the code written on a…
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121562
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among and begin / bouquets
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121500
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She lets the book drop through her fingers to the floor and stares straight ahead watching the red lights streak by in the darkness. The train rocks her away from the seat and back; she rolls her spine along the plastic to absorb the motion, taking it away from…
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121522
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“I am the Successor of Peter!” he said, supporting himself on the shepherd’s staff topped with a crucifix: “And you are trespassing on Holy Ground.” Baal said: “No ground is Holy for me.
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121500
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It seems like that is all I really knowThe narrow confines of my existenceThe sun rises and falls somewhere,And all living things, move, work struggle and fightCarrying a bucket of water, while the sunBangs the day's rhythm on my armsThere's a war going on, all the…
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121500
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These were strange realizations, and each built upon the one before until I was completely mystified and unsettled in my life.
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121500
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Dog winged the monkey's gerdonderplonk just past ceremony. Winkle-wizzened water garglers awoke wanderjanked while apple-gated confederates slept on. Rusty pipe smack-down cancelled water lily gumbo's two o'clock and Patsy sang Crazy for the millionth time.…
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121400
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“Grow some fucking balls, Satan!”Did I just say that? To the prince of darkness?Yes. Yes, I did. Let me back up.*It was around 10:30 Saturday morning when the phone rang. I recognized the caller id.“Hi, Satan,” I said as I picked it…
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121460
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As unlikely as it may seem, John Coltrane was in fact a member of the U.S. Navy Band in 1947 in Honolulu.
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1214116
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macho bucks in velvet defy you driving down the lane
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121420
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“Pull out, pull out, you dimwit!” Cheryl B told Andy. “I told you to pull out before you came, if you ever expect to climb up on top of me again! God, Andy, what’s wrong with you?”
Cheryl had flaming red hair and was what we now call “Plu
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12141712
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Matt was among those rare creatures; an ideal kind of reader ...
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121477
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The monkey did not live for long. He’d lost interest in the stuffed dog pretty much right away. The farther away the shuttle, the more garbled and fanciful the sign language the monkey had been taught became.
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121410
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It was the absence of small sounds he felt most. The clink of a spoon against china, a floorboard’s distant creak, the swish of that old, broken-toothed comb through her hair. A thousand tiny sounds that had proved he wasn’t alone.
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121455
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with binoculars
neighbor reads
screen text:
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121420
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I remember another one night stand in NYC with a girl named Marilyn. We’d met up at Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Vermont. It was the Summer of Love, and a number of us student writers were planning a trip out to San Francisco to participate in that f
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121400
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It was mostly accidental.
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121422
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I don't care what my reincarnated self thinks about today. I'm already aware that everything stinks in the end. Well. It's supposed to. But all things must seek travel while they can. Dance while they can. Dream while they can. Laugh while they can.…
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121432
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About four in the afternoon
a pigeon began admiring itself
in the shiny panel of a car door
until another pigeon came along
and it quit acting foolish.
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121401
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Thanks for the invitation, although you don't make the Undergraduate Verse Society Ice Cream Social and Poetry Slam sound very appealing.
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121422
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121362
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Look, “Wolfie,” (or “Pharaoh,” or whatever your name is now) a little too much information, don’t you think? I don’t need to hear all the details about you and Sharon. It’s my life, and I’ll cry if I want to – to alter the song just a
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121311
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But please, don't let me fall into any more smaller pieces than I already have, before I get to kiss someone again and really mean It. I'm pretty sure I've always believed in something more positive than just hate. I've …
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121311
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I looked through the window of my shop here in Laredo and saw him standing there with his six-shooters drawn as I sized him up from his head to his toes. A ten-gallon, weathered black hat sat atop his head and a worn pock-marked and sun-bleached, denim shirt criss-crossed…
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121233
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Have you ever heard a bird sneeze?
Okay, okay, I was sitting on this branch,
and you know how everybody loves to hate poetry, right?
So, I ran into some hippies, who had named their daughter Echinacea,
and you could instantly read her future, and
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121241
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“So–you can get a stimulus check even if you’re dead?” I asked.
“hell man–in chicago you can vote if you’re dead. i’ve tried to stay active politically.”
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121200
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Her light blue eyes fixed on a point to our left, past one of the church steeples poking out of the flat, charred ground – like a toothpick protecting a birthday cake from its cellophane ceiling; an untouched bethesda keeping the never-blue sky from crash
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