2103 1 0
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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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21031311
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She sits and waitsOn a chair that is hardWith a neck that hurtsAnd an eyeball that stings.She sitsSo stiffOn a chair that is hardWith a neck that hurtsAnd an eyeball that stings.She sitsAnd the hand on her lapHas a joint that cracksWith a neck that hurtsAnd an eyeball that…
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2103122
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Frankie married me during my theory stage. I hadn’t known her long.
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210375
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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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21031411
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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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210286
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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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210242
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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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2102204
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In the hotel lobby, the gold light and warmth and flower arrangements were all lies, but they reminded us of spring. We imagined happiness. We checked in.
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210220
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Left, I see parkland and cyclists and sun. Right: picnic blankets, naked men and lunchtime assignations.
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210211
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an old Black woman, a sequined black cap poised on the left of her crown of black infused gray hair. A gray wool shawl that seemed to perfectly match her hair's color wrapped her all the way down to her hips, where a battered pair of blue jeans rested
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210253
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"I see a child's bicycle swarmed by bees. A stolen oil painting of a helicopter...no, no, that ain't it. Wait. A high school basketball coach will hang himself from a bridge you often think about. This man, now, he's a Navajo Indian.
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2102128
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She’s the worst student in my Modern Film class and we’re alone at a bar.
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2102136
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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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210111
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This is the story of my friend, Gil
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210193
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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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210182
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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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21012416
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I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.
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2101910
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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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210132
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Grand Dad was born in the time where men of honor were never too far when danger arose, like the phlegm and fevers of an oncoming plague.The oversized house felt stagnate and angry as he closed the heavy solid wooden front door behind him. There was an echo that made…
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210000
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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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210083
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21003313
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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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210021
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Dog time is water. Incidents bob near the surface, fall into whirlpools, sink or drift with the flow.
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21001313
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He stays a couple of yards behind me as we slog uphill. I try to diffuse the tension with a coy toss of head, slip on wet leaves. My ankle rolls and I splat noisily down. From my new angle his beard looks less stylish—bristles straggle all up his neck. He maintains…
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210001
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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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20992314
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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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209975
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Pow! I shoot him through his jelly donut.
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2099119
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I’ve had my face talked off by those types (and I’m sure you’ve met a few) who need to say and hear “special” words, and they go "unh-hunh, unh-hunh, o yeah, o yeah, unh hunh."
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209811
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"Geez," I thought, "not only is this daredevil felon fellow my EXACT height and build — his co-conspiring gal-pal must be, too!" I exhaled what felt like a gallon’s worth of air though my nose. "This is just getting too fucking weird ..."
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209810
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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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