2123 8 7
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His mouth is a flesh cave where a grizzly slumbers and winter is the blank page of my face.
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21233313
|
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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212310
|
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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21231010
|
Bob’s thoughts drift back to bird, the solitary creature in the field, dignified, unhurried, waiting. Bob wonders where he goes; surely he will move on when spring gives way to summer.
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21232618
|
sooner or later you realize
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212220
|
She spilled her neurons across the dissecting board of the violin, breathed deep and forced herself outward with every exhalation. Her molecules mixed with wax and horsehair, and her heart valves arched in unison.
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21221313
|
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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212198
|
my father has a phobia of dentists./ he also once felt/ that if the house ran out of toilet paper/ he would lose his job.
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212101
|
I cannot remember what the celebration was for, but the baby was at its center. We passed him around, a sweet smiling boy about seven months old. The age when babies can sit but can't yet crawl and their thighs get plump.
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21213017
|
It was a surprise they put me in a dormitory, not a cell,
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212185
|
I could love them all, your people, /
Learn their differences, speak their tongues, /
When there is no one there to hold you /
But me, my arms would be wide enough /
To hold armies of your need. Do not forget.
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2121119
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They kiss, opening their mouths into a smile, sharing a secret. Their kiss is so intimate. I blush, and look away embarrassed and a little aroused.
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21202216
|
My mother used to say she'll be just like you and you‘ll deserve it. I was a Punk Rocker. A rebel. Emily worries about things like grades and sports. She's on the soccer team. I got stoned under the bleachers. Emily, is a good kid. …
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212072
|
There were a lot of advantages to having shoelaces.
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212011
|
you wear the warmth of death/
and your heat eternity/
blasts on mourn from your heart
|
211931
|
A canister of unused laughter taken from the mouth of a baby not yet born
A splinter of wood from a cross, perfectly preserved in dark tea
taken from the belly of a dead Irishman
A milky vial of smog taken from the air of Los Angeles circa 1965
A
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21192713
|
This is not a story you expect to end at Cape Horn.
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211910
|
Forever
Implies
To my recycled soul
That it is achievable
If only I stretch myself
Towards it
|
2119138
|
I had been in bed for a couple of days and by this I mean sleeping for fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. I don’t think that I believed in God anymore. I no longer knew how to stay awake.
|
211864
|
I put my arms around her and whisper to her while she plays the piano. She wiggles and tells me to stop it.
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211864
|
“I better go. My mom needs me at home,” she says. Soft. Smooth. Firm. Sweet. Maybe I’m pushing too hard. I kiss her on the cheek and she stiffens in response. My heart bleats.
|
211861
|
Puberty, for Ellen, was less than an overnight event—yes, she got her period in a more or less timely fashion, but what her doctor referred to coolly as secondary sexual characteristics—namely, boobs—took their damned sweet time in coming.
|
211800
|
Alysia slowed down for a moment. She clutched her head again. She looked up and found herself at a playground. There was a familiarity in the air.
|
211800
|
I, personally, just had no interest in having some pimply-faced moron stick his tongue down my throat.
|
21171715
|
When you prime tobacco the old way . . .
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211710
|
Before I was 18 years old, in my small home town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, I invented the designer jean...
|
211720
|
A black wind raced ahead of the Merbreth and Juko could smell the thing's fur, matted with the blood of men. The coppery scent mingled with the fear coming off the men around him, a fear so palpable it became a tangible thing, something to be tripped over
|
211775
|
Pow! I shoot him through his jelly donut.
|
21162314
|
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...
|
211671
|
In a few brief moments the entire sky became full of this wetness and greyed to the point of almost blackening, and it was a Sunday morning, and the man thought that thoughts were strange things, because he had a piercing epiphany that there was no God..
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