2439 20 15
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The tailfins of our ’57 Plymouth Fury dip and rock from the stress: Three boys—say no more?—jumping into the car. And Dad, loading suitcases into the trunk, working them around the steel cooler heavy with Cokes, root beers, ice. He slams the trunk lid dow
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243830
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Imagine, if you will, the heartland of America–the Mississippi River Valley–as a woman sprawled out on a bed.
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24372315
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I blame it all on evil humors. Something's leaking.
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2436196
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She's at an artist colony in the state of Virginia. She's in her studio. She should be writing. That's what everybody thinks she's doing out here. Why else would she be in her studio alone at 3:00 a.m.? But there's an interloper. A new painter? Sculptor? Maybe he…
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24353915
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In her paper, Emmeline compares Mary Todd Lincoln's crazy, which involved spending lots of money and going to séances, with her Aunt Janine's, which involves wearing cowgirl outfits and running with strange men.
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243531
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The Japanese sun, blood-red and vibrant, like a Cézanne apple, was setting far away in the distance over the snow-capped peak of Mt. Fuji. For a moment, the intensity of the light blinded him. He could not see the road ahead. His front bicycle wheel wobb
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243501
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Andrew didn’t need oil and neither did his mother. In fact, the only reason oil was on his mother’s mind was because it was the last thing on her mind. He did not get up to get it, and she did not protest.
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243511
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Too late, I feel a bite under my left heel, but before I can look, I blunder into Robert and Paul rolling across the bedroom floor. They knock me over like a bowling pin, and I grab Robert’s hands and try to pull them from around his father’s neck.
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243400
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Something was there. It was undeniable, and he turned to face the padre, whose eyes were now clenched shut. Without asking for further permission, he moved his hand in-between the intestines, which felt like curtains of tightly—wound chorizos. Suddenly
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243451
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Silent Murf was largely toothless, and the gaze from his eyes diverged in opposing directions; his skinny arms were a fancywork of jailhouse tattoos and what appeared to be scabbed-over claw marks.
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243352
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There was that time he decided to avoid the whole situation by getting off the bus early.
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243320
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A surreal conversation in a library hints at something else.
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243212
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The Army Corps of Engineers spent $92,000 in federal stimulus money on costumes for mascots such as Bobber the Water Safety Dog.
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243220
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I linger and pretend that I’m not there,
you find me in the end but I’ll not dare
to speak the words I only know to write.
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243122
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The girl I sat next to said she had just looked up in time to see it, Randy, and it was quick thinking that you avoided it. Randy said he nearly missed it and commented on how Judy was the only one in the world who could discover plastic bubble paste, bab
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2430910
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When Matthew calls I'm sautéing garlic for the polenta and Joe is squeezing buttercream rosettes from a Ziploc bag onto a spice cake he made from scratch. Or trying to—we…
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2430127
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I signed on with a large national restaurant chain to write descriptors for menus, and I was the very first to use the term "farm-fresh" to refer to eggs.
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243042
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Maybe it's a suicide clock, counting the drops of blood on the bathroom tile. A cancer clock counting the number of good cells still willing to fight. Maybe it's a justice clock, counting the remaining days of freedom you have left.
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24301513
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Where will you hide? Because you know it Will seek you out for answers you might Only be asking for yourself. It Will send many students to stand outside Your apartment and chant your name. It will beg you to perform its birth Again to the…
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24291511
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is every word is a small step takenaway from you that arcs back to me likea mamba's mouth. I'm not going aroundin place so much as running in circles. You can see my devilry here. You arethe truth here and that makes me the lie. You'renew morning. I'm much, much more…
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242901
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“No Jumping!” Med.z Tony says.
I pull open my switchblade and dust off my shoulder.
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242852
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"People do that. They cross the road when they aren’t supposed to and get away with it. They do it all the time. Only, then, he might think I was a rebel and I’d rather he imagine me a square. A square who never was a wild thing. A rebel who chose to be t
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242877
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Somehow, I have your body,
but you’ve gone missing.
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242800
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It's hard to say who was the first to point a finger towards the sky. Maybe it was the cherubic overall-clad toddler perched on the shoulders of his father's worn brown leather jacket. Maybe it was one of the teenaged girls, their long straight hair whipp
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24281812
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Go to your room. Children are meant to be seen not heard.
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242654
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When she was eleven, Margaret still believed in mermaids. She would fasten the neon diving rings that her mother gave her to her ankles and swim around in the pool for hours. By the end of the afternoon, with chlorine-swollen skin she would wince as she…
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242621
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-No, just drugged, I remind myself. The hallucinations are more real, more accurate than before. While the dreams get more nightmarish, the hallucinations get more nostalgic. I prefer the nightmares. No one knows if this treatment will work, but what bett
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242500
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My half-brother Salvy laughs each time we meet here at the hospital to visit our father Phil, who has lung cancer. He laughs because Phil married my mother, not his. He laughs at my job in Valhalla, the final resting place for those who lose at the…
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24241515
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for Bill YarrowPoetry is a way of breathingagainst the enemy's chest withoutlosing consciousness again. Itis a ghost dance. Poetry is tobe determined by the plight of bees.Poetry is a waterfall ona mailing list. I've never tasteda finer whiskey than poetry.Poetry is half…
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24231411
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Her husband wouldn’t let her call an exterminator. That doesn't work, he said. The real reason he said no was that he was cheap.
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