2065 2 1
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In the blue of the yard the twins boil and scrape,
twisting about beneath the sycamore tree.
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2065 2 0
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A bank bag now hung from those teeth—yellow-gray rancid, decaying teeth, strands of tobacco chew laced in between. Those thin pen mark lips could not hide the teeth’s keyhole spaces, shaped by open cavities—the bank bag hung from those teeth. The me
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2064 3 2
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The house was empty now - silent. Each room was filled with air too thin to sustain memory. She stood, absorbing the emptiness, addding it to her own. Her footsteps were hesitant, reluctant to disturb the silence. She walked into her old bedroom - so…
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2064 2 0
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The snake glides unhurriedly through the garden one warm July afternoon looking for a schmoose. Or barring such pleasant daytime passage, a shady snoozing spot. He twines himself about the gravid apple tree’s trunk caduceus-like, slithering his handsom
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2064 0 0
|
“Regard this inkblot,” the Psych says to Worker 168. “What do you see?” Worker 168, a thin young women wearing overalls, peers at the inkblot. “I see a beautiful summer day,” she says. “A young woman, wearing a flowing dress, sits…
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2063 10 3
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Several friends—hers and his—hung around the edges of their marriage, and it would be naive to rule out the possibility of a few stray affairs. The thought didn’t anger him; on the contrary it amused him as if it were some trivia question, the answe
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2063 12 7
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I draw your location on my thighs. It takes up both legs; it’s far. I think about showing you but something comes up. The phone rings. I tell her I don’t want to donate to the PBA.
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2063 17 18
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It's that quiet comfortable darkness. One should feel it often and necessarily.
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2063 2 1
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A herd of garbage trucks groaned down dark streets filling their black hydraulic hearts with rotten trashcans and glass, and a smile ate her whole face. I showed her a text from a friend: "T-minus 10 seconds till meltdown."She laughed and I wrote back.A small,…
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2062 5 2
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She sees the little girls in the yard through her front window. They’re as naked as the day they were born, not far from the event itself. They dip backward and forward like pitchers, laughing, balling up their little white fists and shaking them like t
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2062 14 7
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All week my crew and I waited for the snuff party. An obscure fete where someone gets killed strictly for the entertainment and viewing pleasure of others. Before you judge us know this, people die every day for no reason at all.
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2062 4 1
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Dear England,
Please send me a redheaded boy, fire-red, please. We have one girl aflame but the others are stone yellow or dark as the sea. The flames are so easy to spot from afar.
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2062 1 0
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The sun browbeat me relentlessly, like a one-eyed judge with an unforgiving heart.
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2062 5 4
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The daughter's trip, a travail, cross country; the painkillers were not the finisher mom needed—and the white sheets of the institution were too thin to provide her any comfort as she dreamt of swimming; a backstroke suspended over a waterless pool.Her father…
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2062 0 0
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The warmth flowed around her, and her heart beat at a calming pace. She felt as though the heat bathed her like water and felt her body cleansing within it.
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2062 8 5
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There's a drain in the floor.
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2061 28 12
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At some point, we will have to shoot them/
through the eyes and skull and heart
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2061 13 8
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I still believe in the very slim chanceI might say something luckyenough to reach your truest insides, your at homespirit, that you will hearand understand ascare on my part, evenif you can never quiteidentify me asits secret sender, that warm…
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2061 10 5
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I do not yet really understand the power I seem to have at this moment. And I am certainly too young to recognize that it will end up being weakness, too.
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2061 13 11
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For those of you with a position cemented firmly to the contrary, I happen to think I have a great face, actually. My face, maybe I talk about my body a lot, but my face is pretty great, really it is.
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2061 4 2
|
You like your life. Ducks march in a row. You've reached a certain age but you're strong. Healthy. You've got food, clothing, shelter. You have insurance and important papers. You don't have a man in your life, and you admit— Admit nothing. The…
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2061 6 6
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Every single girl, from junior to senior (and a few counselors too, I suspected), wanted to make out with Marty Miller. Did he know how drunk with attraction I was?
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2061 8 2
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The closest I've been to Ireland is Conwy castle on the coast of Wales. It was summer, mid-way through college. I was naive and dreamy then. I wandered historic and literary monuments throughout England and weighed my future options.
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2061 5 0
|
In a hot splattering we were born
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2060 8 3
|
For fifteen years Wendy waited for Harry to leave his wife. From time to time, there’d been ultimatums, break-ups too, but they never stuck. Now Wendy’s luck was about to change.
It was Tuesday, Wendy and Harry’s standing night to be together. His wif
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2060 2 0
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Old man Hensley was fed up. With everything, he would say, if one was so inclined to ask (which was not advisable). It was his first morning as an official retiree and, if it was…
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2060 7 2
|
Frank must have said "don't touch" about a million times over the course of the day
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2060 5 3
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He looked up as he reached the intersection, and crossed as it cleared. His head was down again as he walked toward his car, which was parked beside a schoolyard, where junior high students were involved in an after-school game of touch football. He smi
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2060 12 11
|
Mick Jagger and I strolled rue Gabrielle in Montmartre. Our conversation spread from apples to shellfish. We stopped for some oysters. Do you remember a time when books were venerated, I asked? I remember a time, he said, when rock and roll was a fetus in the tank of…
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2060 6 1
|
I am coming to understand how many memories of my father involve him, driving
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