1998 17 11
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I fired God today. He wasn't showing up for work, slept through meetings, wrote ambiguous memos and killed too many innocents. Things just weren't working out.
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1998189
|
I don’t name the dog but the fish requires a name. Animals that do not get eaten must be named. The dog is still on the menu.
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199811
|
Stretch marks part my heart,
stretch marks part my body.
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199775
|
The sea is transparent rubber, and peering down into it I recognize the shiny fish in suspended animation, their partially exploded bodies obscured by their own blood.
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199700
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Alysia lifted her head and felt Reya wipe her tears away. She looked at her friends and smiled a little. Happy that she was not alone.
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1997117
|
The store was closing for good, and so I purchased a book of poems by Cavafy,
that poet of ruins and tombstones, and fragments from disintegration.
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19971511
|
When we're near, there is a black cloud, such as Sylvia Plath described in her unabridged journal, that semi-appeared in her rental cottage where she and Ted Hughes lived in Cornwall. The cloud filled the center of the room where she sat alone.
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199600
|
My mystery woman smiles a hidden smile through her mask, and attempts to seduce me with her eyes. She says not a word, but brings up her hand and beckons me with the classic one finger curl that says, “Come hither.” Her eyes make promises, and she turns:
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19962112
|
I couldn’t begin to give an account of the latest days.
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199610
|
It was 1635. During the time of the Tokugawa, not too many years before the British were expelled from Nippon, Minister Miyoshi no Kyoyuki of Edo decided to indulge in a practice he had heard rumored of the British.
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19952719
|
We are not alone, not as alone as we think.
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19951514
|
“I’m going home,” I answered, but the word home seemed inappropriate. I hadn’t told the truth and felt something, not guilt as guilt was far too strong, but still I felt something that moved me enough to amend my answer: “I’m going to the place where I gr
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199521
|
He had no idea about the first three cards - what he would call the flop - which looked dubious and full of danger.
|
199500
|
His hands were like that when he was born. No one really understood why. Neither of his parents had any body parts made of oats. Neither of them had even eaten any oats the morning the conception took place. But sure enough, when Edwin MacGrain was born o
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199575
|
At the Bizarre Bazaar in the village of There You Are we waited on the platform when the Midnight Special steamed into the station pulling a plain brown wrapper disguised as an invisible train
|
19951312
|
She learned the difference between listening and hearing, between looking and seeing.
|
19942416
|
The planet will be fine without us as it was/
when the Permian extinction made the goo/
that made the Rockefellers wealthy.
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19941711
|
I would be proud to be your house rabbit. I make this case: I will listen flop-eared close to your every concern
and exhultation. If I doze off nudge me. I wake quickly.
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199453
|
Please stay on the line. Or don't stay on the line. We don't care. If we cared about your call, we'd answer it. Which, to be honest, isn't going to happen. We're going to make you hold. And while you hold, we're going to subject you to some really bad…
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199393
|
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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199300
|
With Sora looking, they realized they caught her attention, but Ciel just turned away. Azure wanted to talk to her and let a few things off her chest. She figured they both could settle this through talking and move forward from there
|
19932514
|
Mama's good at finding things, but hardly ever what she's looking for.
|
1992107
|
The birds were stacked up in the branches of a pine tree behind the feeder. Several were sitting on the fence. “They’re massing,” she said.
|
199252
|
1 Michael Martone is Michael Martone.
1.1 Michael Martone begins, middles, and ends Michael Martone.
|
199111
|
"How did you know he was a nobody if you didn't look at him, eh? Did you raise your eyes and look him in the face? Are you my wife or a whore?"
|
19912110
|
He grew red-faced at her quiet words, "I'm pregnant."
|
19902313
|
She stepped out of her panties. She spread her arms wide. "Take me!" she sang.
|
199020
|
. . . not if I have anything to do with it.
|
1990139
|
It is Cary's favorite time of day. School is finished and he is alone, outside his home; and that is the way Cary likes it. Buffalo Bill is having a grand time today! In one corner of the backyard where the grass is bare, Cary is leading the little plastic Bill to…
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199001
|
Luther Mishmash stood numbly in the yard, dumbly staring at the soiled pair of underpants flapping lazily in the breeze on the wash line. Grandpa had wet himself again. Tomorrow, at school, he knew he’d hear about it. Luther wasn’t sure which was more
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