2170 4 2
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I lock the last of the beer and wine doors and head back to the cash register. Our clocks are not on bar time so I only have a few minutes. I check the till. A stack of ones and three fives. Enough to break a twenty, but looking bare. The parking lot's empty. The air…
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217023
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Once Mom finally came to terms with the fact that my brother was gay, she became convinced he was a serial killer. “He has all the signs,” she told me as she trimmed my hair. “Signs?” I asked, watching her in the…
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21691412
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...but still, when she whispers that going out now might put her in the mood later he unties from his mooring and sets them both drifting toward the gin-splintered latitudes
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216984
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All the neighborhood kids waited for the school bus on a small cement slab at the bottom of the first big hill on Blackhorse Road. My mother made me scrambled egg sandwiches on wheat toast every morning for breakfast before I left for school. Then one mor
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216895
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During fifth grade, I was called /
closeted queer and tall faggot.
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21681410
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I can never tell if he’s drunk or using some sort of substance or if perhaps his brain just doesn’t fire at the pace that we have come to accept as normal.
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2168204
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It's supposed to resemble the sea bed. These fish have never seen the outside of an aquarium and even if they had, they are reef fish, they'd probably get the bends and die if they went to the bottom of the ocean where the chances of them finding a cerami
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216811
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216820
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Robert was not in any sort of metaphysical or spiritual sense seeing himself, as in the scales falling from his eyes and seeing himself as he was. He was a long way from that kind of insight. He was literally seeing another himself.
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216864
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The last time Ray and I broke up, I flew my flag at half-mast. It was the kind of thing that pissed him off. He was very big on flag etiquette: how the flag should be folded, the fact that it should never touch the ground, when to fly it at half-mast, the rules regarding…
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21672013
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A tiny story, 55 words, just enough to fit on a . . .
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216700
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Ai picked up the ball and noticed the feathers. Wings unfurled and the head looked up. Staring deep into the bird’s eyes, Ai could have sworn she saw flames.
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216775
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His open door was interpreted by the neighbor as an invitation to all but place a mirror under his nose. She demanded opportunities to fluff his pillows and coerced him into accepting gifts of food, more than he could possibly eat, and sometimes ate with
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2166149
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I passed Buster Keaton on the way to work this morning. He was standing, hands in pockets, at the corner of Riverview and Keil. It was the young Buster, handsome and still strong enough to pin down the scars that marked his childhood. This was the Buster
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216665
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Our problems started with a few back and forth texts of emojis late one night. The next evening, a Friday, typically my poker night with the guys, my girlfriend came to the door.“You brought over pizza, how nice,” I said. “And, oh, gosh, look at that, a…
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216699
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feeling obligated to write/ is like feeling/ obligated to fuck.
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21661512
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Flexeril and Hydrocodon... For my back
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2166193
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"And you’ll forgive my sayin’, your Maggie’s in heat, and if ya want to keep her you’re gonna ‘ave to fight. To be sure after this they’ll leave ya alone.”
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2165119
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Dude -- I DON'T want to date your boat!
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2165147
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I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY TO YOU, she lisps, and, with this, the fissure in the man’s head reaches the bottom of his chin and the hollow head splits in two.
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216587
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A child in a new world/
by way of the old I won’t remember.
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2165114
|
My name is Wanda McClure and I lived in the foothills of Eastern Kentucky. A small town miles off the interchange, and mostly in the middle of nowhere. I lived in a trailer. I was 52 years old.
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2165147
|
a question that (never) left
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21642318
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a poem about an abduction in my NYC neighborhood
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216441
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There’s an oak tree in Hanover, New Hampshire. Twenty years old, it is still a sapling. I imagine that one day the tree will have a commanding view of the Connecticut River and Norwich, Vermont, where my mom sat in bed, crying, watching everything unfol
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216473
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My daddy made all these gold records on the walls, died, and left me to run BadSmack Media, even if I could only manage to run it aground.
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21642513
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I was sitting on the therapist’s couch in someone else’s boxer shorts.
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216356
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The lizard is like wearing wings on my back, makes me fly like a dragon in my dreams, which I have all day long, while looking at you, talking to you, right now, having dreams in some part of my head. I'd like to stick out my tongue and lick the part of m
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2163219
|
to say that he was
doing fine
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216351
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I’ve never liked birds. There’s something smug about the way they look at us, we prisoners of gravity, something self-congratulatory in their songs. Maybe I’m just projecting my own feelings about being stuck on the ground, attributing attitudes t
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