2130 10 9
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I hear the slightly scratched voice of Joan Baez coming from
the record player singing about the junipers in the pale moonlight,
applause erupting like hailstone on a corrugated iron roof.
I am singing back through the bedroom wall,
wishing the
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21293313
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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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2129910
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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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21292618
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sooner or later you realize
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212820
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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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212800
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I, personally, just had no interest in having some pimply-faced moron stick his tongue down my throat.
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21281313
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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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212798
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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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212743
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What you may see initially could be only half the poem. The rest is hidden.
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21263017
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It was a surprise they put me in a dormitory, not a cell,
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212661
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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.
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212600
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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.
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212684
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He ate husks of bone and old paper scraps with yesterday's headlines, blowing down the street like tumbleweeds now at four o'clock in the morning.He wrapped himself in an old army coat against the November winds as he tramped back and forth, back and forth, up the ten…
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212500
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Mama Blinkey Lights yells at Papa Blinkey Lights and tells him to quit playing the fool, and when we turn our attention back to removing the shafts, we are chagrined to find that not only have they multiplied once again, but that they have gone yet farthe
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212501
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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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212572
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There were a lot of advantages to having shoelaces.
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212501
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#1 MISCELLANEOUS NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
What kind of person would the author’s daughter, Gracie, become? That things didn’t look bright for her future was an understatement: Mother: alcoholic, dead at age 25 from puking her brains out; Father: m
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212520
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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
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2125138
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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.
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21242216
|
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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212496
|
He told me he could feel an army of tears building up behind his eyes.
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212431
|
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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212430
|
I was crouched under a bruise-purple sky on a field of battle. I held a World War I-era weapon, an ancient black-iron spear with a spring, and I was told to load balloons onto it without popping them, and then I was to fire the balloons at some unnamed ta
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212464
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“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.
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2124119
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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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212385
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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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21221715
|
When you prime tobacco the old way . . .
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21222713
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This is not a story you expect to end at Cape Horn.
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21222118
|
There can be no convergence./
There is only the talking that talks about/
an angle of sight nothing else can share.
|
212263
|
Now it turns out, the story doesn’t begin with the butterfly lady, herself, but with her brother.
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