2107 9 3
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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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21071011
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the brand we like best and buy whether it's on sale or not. Surely there is another blue cheese dressing that is sold, possibly in San Francisco and made in a Berkeley basement by hippies who scrape together all of their change twice a year and buy cheese from an ancient…
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210775
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When I was fifteen and we were moving to Mississippi, my boyfriend in Canada told me I was going to live in the swamp with the alligators. I didn’t understand why my father would pick such a hick place. Rob gave me his cricket bat to hang over my bed, a
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2107104
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I feel a strange loneliness for her...I think I will go to the beach, and forgive it for its sharp sand and lack of trees.
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210686
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Sal, a finder of misplaced objects notices the sunglasses, flip flops and boxers left on the pathway heading to the beach. They are his gifts today, so gallant is he of these ‘strays’ seeking ownership. He tries the glasses on first and feels dizzy.
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2106109
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When you think I'm not looking,
I always am.
You say it's like nicotine, your best analogy as a non-smoker.
The kind of hit that is hard to live without and isn't it human nature,
you ponder.
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210610
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Daddy? Yes, hun. What do you think about life? Did you ask your mother? I'm asking you. (lowers newspaper) Well, (squinting eyes) life gives you so much pumpkin. ! and (like a whip) and..? (brows almost touching the hairline)…
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210621
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“Jus’ because a story told right don’t make it true,” he said. “Sometimes the story is there ain’t no story. Sometimes you look way down inside, and ain’t nuthin’ there. Can’t write no book ‘bout nuthin’. Won’t sell none. But them
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21062416
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I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.
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21061210
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by myself next to just one wide-eyed moment of wild blued out ocean. You know the one I mean. I don't want to have to speak to you, or even- alone- to myself. I'd like to be left inside the poem it makes me feel without having to get up and pee every…
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210620
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Left, I see parkland and cyclists and sun. Right: picnic blankets, naked men and lunchtime assignations.
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2106114
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Everything is illuminated. If anyone is watching, we look happy.
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2106910
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No one knows that, while the ex-Area 51 guy delivered his rant, Art Bell left the booth for a Diet Coke.
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210694
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Every morning, the children dig holes for their parents. This is both necessary and beneficial: the kids need to dig and the parents have to be buried.
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2106136
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You are a boy with a birthday bike smiling like our son, standing in a photograph surrounded by other sons, who turn rocks over and over, who keep snakes in plastic bread bags, who find the bones of something wild in the woods. You smile that way still.
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210582
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It was Warren who introduced me to this bouncer fellow named John O’Toole. Warren met O’Toole and his wife, Angelina, through the dark prison poet Eugene Forcer. Forcer and O’Toole were the best of friends until a riff erupted between them one drunken n
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21051411
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She was petite, pear-shaped, white, the girlfriend of a friend who'd done his degree in Russian Literature, but that's not the only reason I liked him. The husband I had for a while traveled whether he needed to or not and so I'd go with Julie and Phillip to movies,…
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21054722
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Only strong personalities can endure such size, the weak ones are extinguished by it.
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210501
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“Charlie was right about you, Nan,” she said in a voice of pure defeat. “You are a gentle spirit. And probably too good for people like us.”
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210495
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Last night in the shower, I felt only vaguely aware that something in me had changed.
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210400
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For years I watched behind the glass
While merry parties purpled past
But now the world’s a Solemn Mass
And I can only think.
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210311
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This is the story of my friend, Gil
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210363
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"Hattie? What are you doing?" Bosley asked, the quaver in his voice an indication of an impending erection.
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210273
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“You’ll have to do better than that,” Skip says.
My husband laughs. He has a high girlish chuckle when he’s truly delighted. He can sing really high like a girl, too.
“All right,” I say. I leave my headband
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210283
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21023313
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There was dad sitting at the table, wide awake, reading glasses on nose, pen in hand above a Doppler graph of numbers on paper, one of many now-lost theorems, looking up as his son walked into the room.
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210210
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That stupid bastard seemed to defy death at every turn in his life. His actions suggested invincibility, but his catch phrase indicated full awareness that he was indeed quite vincible.
And how fitting was his name. We didn’t know if it
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21022314
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Henry yells at her when she lights cigarettes and candles. But this is her small secret ritual, her way of making good with the god she is no longer sure she believes in...
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21021914
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I'm sitting here listening to Nebraska and it's / breaking my heart
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210200
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Tina saw a tear escape from beneath the frame of the man’s broken glasses. It followed the contour of his cheek until it quivered along his jaw line.
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