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Before I was 18 years old, in my small home town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, I invented the designer jean...
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166050
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once wedding cake
under pillows.
now fluffy frosting
on squashed defeat
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166010
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Daddy? Yes, hun. What do you think about life? Did you ask your mother? I'm asking you. (lowers newspaper) Well, (squinting eyes) life gives you so much pumpkin. ! and (like a whip) and..? (brows almost touching the hairline)…
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166011
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Bracing himself against the wind, Zach gets to his feet without a thought for direction or destination. In the white forever of this place, there is no lantern to light the dark and bitter woods of memory. Even the croakers would find little use for such
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166020
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I was afraid of needles and ponds of water and I was transfixed by both.
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16592423
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That evening I sat and watched the sunset. The color of the water changed from blue to black. The sky turned from pink to star-spangled ebony. There was no moon.
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16591510
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"The cops are just doing what they're being paid to do."
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165932
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The dismantled moon was not cold in our hands, but warm, smooth beneath its shell as baby flesh. The musk of its damp, stringy innards filled us with sorrow.
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1659207
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There are hundreds of fireflies crackling along the tree line and the old stonewall.
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1659105
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I scare my daughter when she sleeps because she thinks I'm going to kill her.
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1659137
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If I had a daughter, this it how it would be. It would be all, Stand up straight, missy, shoulders back, no slouching, and she'd be sulky, sullen, pouting, wilful, and I'd see in her eyes, which would be my eyes, that she was starting to hate me, and I'd
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16581813
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A woman with spirit appeals to men who fish because she is still alive.
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1658910
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1.)At the corner deli, sweat dripping down my face, I ask for black, but Frankie adds milk. Just to spite me. Because I won't sleep with him. As if. Wonder what his wife would say? Punch me in the jaw, right? Like maybe the rules about holy wedlock vary…
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165822
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one numberless character, an army of rants marching one by one, sand by sand, we move mountains this way…
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165831
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I arrived at Yaddo, the prestigious artists’ retreat, in the summer of 1941. With America’s “day that will live in infamy” several months away, my own day of infamy began the second morning of my residency.
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1658176
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A young man pushes a stroller filled with a sleepy child. A young woman strides alongside them, her gait leisurely. They are the first to visit the park today. The trees loom, vigilant.
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16571310
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She stuffed the stars down her stockings
and left;
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165785
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This is where he died, she says to me, and points to the damp pavement. Her hair is wet, and slicked against her neck. The humidity is making everything engulf her. The sleep shorts I bought her last July are loose on her now, but between the rain and
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16571710
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Trent’s had many phases: Madonna, Bette, leather, water sports, rollerblading, haiku, chicken queen, rice queen, muscle queen, daddy. But religion? This is new.
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1657105
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‘In terms of relationship, I am your Father – my name is the Emperor’.
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165763
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Your life is going to change—how many times was that prediction offered in one form or another during my wife’s pregnancy? Mothers often said it with a bliss-touched smile; fathers with a smirk that was both sardonic and conspiratorial, and a distinct
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165752
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1 Michael Martone is Michael Martone.
1.1 Michael Martone begins, middles, and ends Michael Martone.
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165663
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She...learned the ways of men, especially foreign men, who eyed her mother even as they passed around pictures of their children, wallet-bound photographs that included their reluctantly smiling wives.
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165653
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There are times when I run out of places to sleep. I thought my whole life that god gave up on me. The newspaper bin is where I go when I'm desperate. In the center of town there's a large bin for recycling newspapers behind…
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1656103
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They slept in the same bed but that was all they had in common. He, an editor, had shelves filled with literary works and she, his wife of many years and never much of a reader, had strewn their penthouse apartment with Madeline children’s books.
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16551816
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165587
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Whenever talk dies, or darkness gathers too closely around the breakfast table, everyone knows the list of ritual activities we can brightly suggest to skip the day forward.
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165411
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“You’re off till Monday,” the big man told him. “You can thank Mr. Big Mouth and company for that. Death detail gets two days off.”
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16541210
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by myself next to just one wide-eyed moment of wild blued out ocean. You know the one I mean. I don't want to have to speak to you, or even- alone- to myself. I'd like to be left inside the poem it makes me feel without having to get up and pee every…
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165300
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As I fed Puff, I thought about the nightmare Lily shared with me that morning. She dreamed Puff had a hole in his throat and all his blood squirted out until he got as small and skinny as a deflated baloon.
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