1791 9 3
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Our city is really two cities, conjoined. One lives during the day, the other at night. Those who live and breathe daytime air call the city by one name, a name which evokes the relative newness of the place, a name with words just barely invented.…
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179152
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1 Michael Martone is Michael Martone.
1.1 Michael Martone begins, middles, and ends Michael Martone.
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17901712
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The Gothic-filigreed gate creaks as a guard closes it behind the little girl in the ruffled dress. Standing there in the morning fog, on the sidewalk outside the reform school, she looks remarkably like Shirley Temple. Dimpled, chubby face. Pretty, party dress. Her…
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179021
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Ted rose and began searching cushions of the bad furniture in his loft (Monte's loft, if you thought in terms of leases and rent and who had his shit together). Three shineless quarters in the yellow vinyl chair, a dime in the heater, nineteen cents in t
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17891911
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17882515
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I came from the only flat region in the kingdom of mountains and fjords, and called the city “Down in the Dumps”. The beleaguering mountains smelled a flatlander when they saw one, and hated me right back.
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1788255
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" Not a day goes by/ that isn't stabbed with common sorrow"--Maurice Manning Crazy's alright by me if it's a harmless plea for some little sanity, or unavoidable by birth but it just won't do for tricks. Like say I go over there right…
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178872
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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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17871010
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the Way that can be mapped leads nowhere.
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178721
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flash read. have fun *cheers*
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1787119
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Before my mother died, she developed an unhealthy relationship with Sylvia Plath. Under the faded florescent lights of the university they would speak to each other, as I quietly did my homework. I was only seven, but I knew something was the matter. I…
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178763
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Cap'n Pepper tries and tries but Old Salty is never happy.
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178677
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The suspended heart became an oracle of sorts. Hung from a string, immersed in the kind of glass container in which tulips grow, it was located between Bath and Body Works and Kleinfelter's Jewelers at the north entrance of the mall. Someone had lost it,
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17861211
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"So, like the Goldilocks thing…"
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17862514
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Mama's good at finding things, but hardly ever what she's looking for.
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17861817
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"It's time to move the chair..."
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178611
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The Sentinels held up their weapons at the main door, preparing for a fight. Lori saw the look on the girl’s eyes, something she felt she should not see in them.
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17841511
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...still the same old signs...
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17841816
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17842613
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I greatly enjoyed imagining each wonton was one of my personal enemies and then biting it in half and pretending I could hear it screaming piteously as I chuckled and dragged out the chewing.
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17841713
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“You’re a hard habit to break,” I said. My tongue was flaring. Flirting with nurses was my father’s thing.
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178493
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Backs in the grass, legs straight, bare feet resting at angles, Rachel and I, both of us seven, looked up through the oak limbs that made black lightning cracks across a blinding blue sky. Three hula hoops sat trapped in the trees’ sprawled grasp.
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1784133
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I am a 33 year old drag queen, and I frequently confuse my dreams with reality. Each morning, I awake to a research project: what has actually occurred, and what was a dream? Today I woke up believing I'd lost a pound, so I weighed myself, and I was right.…
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178400
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Pussy’s eyes narrowed, her dark, luxurious fur quivering on her back. “How can you say such a thing! It’s not true.”
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178322
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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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178367
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In study hall Brandon sat like a little faggot so I said “Hey faggot.”“That's right, faggot. Don't look at me. I don't like faggots looking at me. I don't want their faggot eyes on me, faggot.”Bell rang and he walked like a faggot and held his books…
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178363
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For some, a vertical pattern will evoke prison bars, for others, product bar codes.
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1783108
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a mid-life crisis in 55 words
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1783128
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Two-way conversation with God.
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178286
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Shakespeare was Shakespeare, after all, the greatest poet the language has ever boasted: why did Shakespeare’s contemporaries even bother with their paltry efforts?
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