4215 12 8
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you dug a hole inside my heart
and asked me if it hurt
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42075553
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You marched in step from 9 to 5, kept perfect pace, pledged allegiance to enforced mediocrity, until the day they let you go—the day you knew that you were never Buddy Holly on their plane; just another passenger, brilliant but doomed.
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41902118
|
On her lunch break, she dumps Luis for Daniel Towens, the ugliest man in the county.
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4185198
|
Once upon a time, on March 8, 2011, to be exact, there was a flash fiction writer named Rinsewater who had a novel idea – flash fiction writers whose stories were published by indie lit magazines must be paid for their work!
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4185105
|
I hold a key to feel its pull, and follow where it leads. Once, because the moment, key, and direction felt so right, I ended up on the streets naked. A police officer threatened me with handcuffs. I laughed, mesmerized by the cuff's clink, their never-ending circles,…
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41832014
|
The ethnographer turns on a recorder. The story began before but that is lost, like it never happened.
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417631
|
I became a fool for Adrienne Parker the first moment I set eyes on her.
Whenever Parker walked into Oliveira's Cafe my breath would stop. I'd try turning away, then find my gaze locked on her face. Maybe it was her bare arms that I found so appealing
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417212
|
She stroked the piano softly with one hand and I shivered. Maybe it was the keys singing or the way her eyes were closed forcing her to feel her way to right spot or the sex in her voice. Maybe it was just in my head.
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41656253
|
Our flag-draped coffins float to the surface of an uncharted sea and we appear together—patriots both—on the cover of Life Magazine.
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41642310
|
As the sun rose each morning, so did the lonely old man with it; a sad limping figure strolling across the front lawn with a cigar tucked in his mouth, lighting fresh candles here and there, perhaps on an imagined grave of some loved one long lost to the infirmity of time…
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416000
|
A cellphone vibrates ineffectually against unfeeling skin. One last rivulet of blood slowly oozes down the wall as it dries. The rest of the room is still.
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415585
|
I did not understand its meaning until college when I learned that Frost would take long walks—the inspiration for so many of his poems—and would leave his wife at home while he did. And just before he left, she would guilt-trip him just a little by walk
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414532
|
“Where do you want your mustache?” Melanie asked. “You can have it on the side, you know, or, if you prefer, across your labia, in which case it will also look like a cross?”
|
414200
|
“Mortal,” it said, and its voice made the cobbler’s soul tremble. “Why do you disturb our peace? It is late, and you should be abed.”
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41413222
|
So, have your whiskey like a good son.
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41402510
|
Class differences in New York (and if you believe F. Scott Fitzgerald, in America, generally) are best viewed from the beach.
|
4137106
|
When I was young, my mother told me that J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual. I don't remember exactly when or why she shared this tidbit with me. This was, after all, fifty years ago. But Mom wasn't a homophobe, so I'm guessing that what intrigued her about Hoover's…
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41314037
|
It is late in the twentieth century and I'm on my hands and knees for you.
|
41301617
|
We descended directly from Charlemagne
|
41298036
|
When he tried to kiss her, she ran to the bathroom to throw up.
|
412676
|
Nobody goes over there cause that’s where the body was found. A little one. Half in and half out the water, waded up like paper.
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41192121
|
"... you shake your head and look down as if I am a mongrel dog who has pissed the Tabriz..."
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411699
|
I guess the ultimate, penultimate failure
would be to write a love poem that
turned on everybody but you.
|
411443
|
What’s it like, sex? I ask her.
You see that picture? she asks, nodding to the large canvas covered with a film of dust propped up against her bedroom wall. That picture’s the only thing she never sold. She hocked it a few times but always got the
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411211
|
i beat myself back into the littlon fish door, the algae sealing strip connecting as it does. Eons ago, i fell, and andy and i met with hands of crab and lobster in an eleborate room benaeth here, but I know very well, i am not him
|
410757
|
(after Joan Didion) (after Charles Dickens)The car is guttering and at first I do not hear him clearly. The antenna is broken and the wipers are loud. he comes in better when I'm off the freeway. “We must forget about material things.” …
|
41042515
|
My brother was the catcher, and we were having sex. I was waiting to be scared. In our act, he would swing upside down from the bar, hanging by his knees, his arms extended, and I would fly into his chalky grip.
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4081148
|
My father failed in business in the 1950's when Dutch Elm Disease killed the elm trees in our Kansas town. He owned a fabric store on a brick street lined on both sides by elms, the doomed trees that transformed every Midwestern town into a magical kingdom and sidewalks and…
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40788543
|
"You," he says, "Sit in here."
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40735526
|
This is what I do for a living: I unpack sentences.
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