2041 6 4
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I find my mother’s pink Pyrex mixing bowl at the antique store on Fairview Avenue. It’s in the hands of a fat woman in a blue down parka, and she’s holding it upside down, squinting at the sticker on the bottom.
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20411811
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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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20412616
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So, we are all healthy but suffering financially, not equally so, and the tendency to suffer financially has been caused by humbling ourselves to particular men. We take a quiz in moral values, phrased as a party game.
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2041101
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Annie remembers clearly the smell of that classroom, the look and taste of it. Thirty little cruel girls, as cruel as only girls can be, sitting in rows of five.
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20403113
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“I liked you best in Choke–you were sexy in a lazy, sort of ‘70s way.”
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20401410
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Just a little shop girl in for the summer. Working on a typewriter. Barely knowing where the keys were. That was her. She was terrible at it. He was in a suit. He looked short, and thin, but something about him was captivating. He was in his own way hands
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204031
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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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203967
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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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203955
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The story will starve. It will crawl up your throat to get the cracker.
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203921
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The diner was half filled with the loose ends of humanity that stayed up until five in the morning. We picked a booth by the window. The light in the diner was a dingy yellow, and the seats were that lobster-red vinyl that could only have been installe
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203922
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The difficulty of disabled parenting was predictable,
but nothing could prepare me
for having to say goodbye to my wife again
on problem #7.
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2039145
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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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20391612
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Night's air awhirl, the sky shoots fireflies.
Sometimes, she bleeds black arrows in her dreams.
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2038108
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Twelve people in the band,
the two women arrive first
(arrive on time).
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203821
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At work I recommended someone go to the Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta. I told you about recommending it to someone.
“I always wanted to go back there,” I said.
“You did? You never told me,” you said.
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20371413
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When I was a little boy, I had a thing about women’s behinds.
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203722
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It's true that he had always been more pure than her, looking for the authentic experience, authentic food. And more adventurous. Blogging their way around the world, yes, that had been his idea . . .
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20371517
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born to be mistreated by beasts in human shapes
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203753
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203692
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It's not that you want to be silkworm all your life. That's what I'm telling my on-again-off-again girlfriend aboard the plane. Her name is Phoebe as in that song about a girl who lived in her own world within the shell of another. Phoebe, I'm saying, to bridge distances…
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203600
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I’m twenty eight years old, and I am dying.
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20364722
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Only strong personalities can endure such size, the weak ones are extinguished by it.
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2036146
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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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203687
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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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2035105
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If it were known that I am as stupid as I am, if the press were to open that page on TV, if the laughter shot itself like fireworks out into the road--
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203531
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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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20351714
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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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203500
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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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203585
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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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203493
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I laugh too loud cause the world looks good that way and for a minute we both make funny sounds just to exercise our vocal cords and see how close we can come to the line without crossing.
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