2195 5 3
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You’ve gathered in church to wait for Jesus. Unarguable signs have let you know this is the day. This is the day of the second coming. This is Judgment Day.
It was a no-brainer to wait at the church.
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219583
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Julie studied her brush, plucking a strand of hair from it. She looked up and smiled. "My mother thought you were a peeper."
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219550
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In a hot splattering we were born
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219464
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You're auditioning women to replace Gabrielle.
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2194103
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I scowl at her through an opioid haze. "Armitage Shanks is my real name."
The clerk snickers. "You mum must have really wanted you to be pissed on from cradle to grave, eh?"
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21941514
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“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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219400
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Ralph Simpson looked as though he wouldn't last through the weekend. His skin, yellowing from the cirrhosis, covered his hands tightly enough so that the veins looked like they would burst from the pressure.
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21941713
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I lean forward and take her two hands in mine. I look into her eyes. “It’s you and only you,” I say. She starts to cry.
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219465
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On their first meeting, when Hans rolled his wheelchair to her door she would be he first to say that her heart sank. But he was so beautiful and charming and funny and quirky that his disability was soon forgotten.
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21941511
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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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219423
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Helen’s mind is not on business. It’s on a pinpoint, a potential, a something so microscopic it’s more a nothing. In her center, it hums.
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2193147
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You know, my mother was afraid that I can no longer resist. She was absolutely right: My four sisters have all passed away before the summer shows its fruit. It was hard "said my mother”, not to see my flowers bloom. I, the calf of my mother,I came…
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21933718
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so sassy so sassy so cool
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219262
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She walked, thighs flaming fire-cold, without complaining or grumbling or cursing the goddamn Midwestern winters the way the others did.
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219222
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“You wouldn't believe it.” Peter leaned in to whisper. “Don’t let the Kodak moment with the wife and kids fool you. That guy is totally gay.”
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219231
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"I would physically — not metaphorically, mind you — make love to that avocado..."
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21921817
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"It's time to move the chair..."
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21921816
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219122
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I remember it was raining and I didn't have an umbrella and I was standing there on the corner, waiting for Rudy's school bus, thinking, Why don't I have an umbrella?
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21901312
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She learned the difference between listening and hearing, between looking and seeing.
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2190148
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once she went to quenchthen she went to scrubnow she collects dead toadsgrinds them with cornmeal to feed her sowsonce she ploughed the land toiled with her face deep in dark soil her back burning in hot sunnow she works in the paper millmaking laminated labels for the…
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219011
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The U.S. blasted into Iraq like gangbangers, baby! All that Shock and Awe shit... Zeep, excitement rekindled within him, hired three chippies, Foxy, Loxy, and Roxy, and partied! He managed between…
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2190138
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The subway train pulled up and I shuffled on board.
I announced to the whole subway car: “I’m a poet.”
And that was all I needed to do. It was like a miracle.
Someone got up immediately and gave me her seat.
People got in an orderly line and began
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21891611
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Poor souls. Likely they'll be poets.
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218942
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Dale of the threadbare corduroy blazer and the same two plaid button-down shirts, of the unkempt beard and short-shorn hair and holed ears, the plugs overloose and then lost so that the effect was not a toughening edginess, but deformity, the same self-in
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218977
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The watermelon slices were painted wood, because they held their shape better in the heat. The photo was done night-for-day with bright spotlights to make for sharper outlines than natural light could provide. In actuality, it is all shadows.
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218960
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“Actually, children, none of us will be having birthdays this year,” my father sighed.
“Not even me? Why?” asked Charlie.
"Son, this is what's known as a ‘one-party democracy."
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21892317
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Lying in the dewy grass in corpse pose, the stars of heaven above him, it was hard not to let worries take over his breath...
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2189103
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Through the window, I see the police. Lots of them, trampling down the blackberry brambles. Something reeks.
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218922
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After we'd been on the highway about an hour, it started to snow. Sammy leaned down to pick up the roach he'd dropped, and we skidded off the highway
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