2193 17 6
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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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219342
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I watched haunted as my pearl tooth circled the rotten porcelain sink. I could feel my hair thinning and my pale skin suddenly felt too loose.
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21931715
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What you see us doing here is not so much, andall we are not being there isn't either. Our kissing mouths may not always be singing, but we are constantly praying for you, and for more rain or less rain, rivers as the situation warrants. Don't…
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21932422
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Last summer our marriage took a direct hit and crashed into a deep pit with little warning when Millicent met a Facebook man and simply left, taking up with him, presenting him with my space in her life to receive her touch and this thought perpetually gnaws away, making me…
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21931714
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Unfinished, deeply flawed stories require the kind of handling you see in movies where a Virus That Will Doom Mankind is disposed of by scientists in hazmat suits.
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219220
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Whenever I hear Adam Sandler's song, “My Piece of Shit Car”, it brings back memories. Notice I don't say fond memories. It brings me back just like the really bad backwash regurgitation flavor…
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2191105
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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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219173
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She didn't care for the taste. Slightly salty and sweet at the same time, but she let him come in her mouth just the same
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2190118
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Erin Hoffmeyer Zulkoski. I was at work today, doodling on a piece of scrap paper. I often find myself writing my name, practicing my signature, for when I become famous. I have always written "Erin Zulkoski." Today, I wrote "Erin Hoffmeyer." This…
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219083
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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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21901811
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She hardly twitches. Her face regards the stars. If her body is an object, it is the isthmus before global warming.
They want to find the source of the glacier in her eyes that is always melting. Maybe they like a woman who cries.
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2190138
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I want nothing to do with anyone,
other than doing nothing with you.
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2190146
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The winter following their son's death, Mr. Kelly's wife became absorbed by the tracks that ran in back of their house. At any given hour in the night, he'd hear her in the next room, their son's old room where she now slept, shuffling through dresser drawers. He…
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21901511
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During war, as in any terrible time of upheaval, burials are merely quick words and a scattering of dirt, if the dead are lucky.
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218953
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Show me where to go, he said out of defiance for the moment in which time was malleable and fat minutes were consumed by wayward, languid hours. And all I could do for the time being was sit there excruciatingly anxious for this to pass, so it…
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218944
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“I changed religions for that baby.”
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218931
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There, at that cabin, she had first tasted the back of a hand in anger, the sting of a horsewhip, bone-deep fear and, finally, an unthinkable act of self defense.
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218983
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The Parachutist closes his eyes, takes a breath, and then opens them back up again. The earth is very beautiful, and very small from where he is. It is getting larger quickly, which is vaguely alarming.
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2188119
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oh, sure i’m still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet/profit/fit trying to cut off my very own de/(con)instruction and all other sordid a•void•able & available /a-Babel-Trumpish towers of post & toastmodern doom/daze/haze
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2188138
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Well I too woke up and felt bitterly alive once more;outside there was this shining fish scale attack sunliterally smashing itself against the window like a crazed yet determined yellowbird of paradise but it just couldn't smack through the little rows of…
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218854
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Valeria never whistled. Nor did she approve of people who did. One thing she had learned in her sixty-seven years was that people who whistled were crass. Butchers whistled. So did peasants.
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218885
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Your pajamas torture us.
When moist they uncomfortably cling. They have evil buttons, and they cause us to stumble on them in the dark.
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218731
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“You people remember the thing you learned in science about every action creating its own equal and opposite reaction? The same is true in other realms. All of existence is continually recycled…again and again in infinite permutations. In other words,
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218764
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When Quince came rolling up into my front yard that morning, we were up to our neck in August, staring down a seventh-grade year that had crept perilously close when we weren’t looking. I’m thirty-five years clear of it now, and I can still sense Texas on
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218711
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Ikkyu liked coming over especially at dinner. I'm a great cook and even though he no longer needed to eat himself, the idea of a sumptuous meal and a nice bottle of wine appealed to him. We'd commune about the poetry of karma flowers, seafood, and women, he in his robes and…
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218693
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2186235
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But it was a necessary evil and one he’d made peace with, easy to do when he arrived home each day to the comforting touch of his wife, his home.
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2186145
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And on nights like those I conjure Martha's childhood, a little girl who could make the whole world fall in love with her, with those goddam big seashell eyes, enticing adults to fall into a blue-green sea that never ends, never promises survival.
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21861415
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A crone dressed in black pours liquid from a bottle onto the egg. Whiskey. Gasp! The egg cooks before our eyes!
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2185146
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"Are you all right?" I ask. He blinks. He sits up. I help him stand. He looks sorrowfully at his coffee cup, which is on the floor.
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