2230 15 17
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born to be mistreated by beasts in human shapes
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2230101
|
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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223023
|
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.
|
222922
|
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?
|
222911
|
This is the story of my friend, Gil
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2229103
|
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?"
|
222922
|
“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.”
|
222841
|
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.
|
2228138
|
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
|
222764
|
You're auditioning women to replace Gabrielle.
|
22271412
|
My mother pointed to the soaring red towers, each with 600,000 rivets, she said, put in place by men like my Pa, by their sweat and arms as hard as balcony railings.
|
22271512
|
The man had come up behind me and locked my arms backwards. I could feel his cock or gun against my low back. He told me if I moved he'd hurt me and he said did I know what that meant? I did know, however I was watching from…
|
222786
|
He winked at me and said Let’s get Harris and Klebold on these motherfuckers.
|
22273718
|
so sassy so sassy so cool
|
222787
|
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.
|
222785
|
On his last day of high school Jackie York woke up to the smell of burning books. He didn't know it was his last day of high school. He did know the smoke coming through his rusty window screen was book smoke.
|
2226176
|
Every time I read a great line by another writer, I feel fear.
|
2226103
|
Through the window, I see the police. Lots of them, trampling down the blackberry brambles. Something reeks.
|
222622
|
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
|
22261312
|
She learned the difference between listening and hearing, between looking and seeing.
|
2226148
|
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…
|
2225149
|
for the rush of longing
and brush with flight
that is her imagination
will surely lift her above the traffic
|
222583
|
Julie studied her brush, plucking a strand of hair from it. She looked up and smiled. "My mother thought you were a peeper."
|
222533
|
I also understand if you don't think that's fair. But consider this: If she doesn't operate according to those rules, then where are we? Isn't that anarchy?
|
2224125
|
He now knew the impossible to be possible.
|
222477
|
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.
|
2223134
|
--How's the wriiting business? How about that thing you' was workin' on..."Gawain's Green Nights?"
--Yeah, well, I'm kind of off the soft-core...
|
222373
|
Ancient erections loom aloft
ringed by decades
centuries for some
in gnarled scabs of pine.
|
22231713
|
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.
|
222221
|
On the first day of autumn, in the rear courtyard of the Léger estate, Yvette Mongrain was scrubbing down the glass tables and wrought iron chairs that had been trucked in from Paris the morning before and arranged across the flagstones.
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