2134 33 13
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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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2134114
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Everything is illuminated. If anyone is watching, we look happy.
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213492
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"There's a concert next month," Sherry said. "Why don't you come to that and I'll introduce you? Then we can go from there."
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2134119
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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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2133910
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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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21332618
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sooner or later you realize
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213384
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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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213298
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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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213100
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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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213131
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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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213101
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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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213161
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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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213120
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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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213043
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What you may see initially could be only half the poem. The rest is hidden.
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213072
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There were a lot of advantages to having shoelaces.
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21303017
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It was a surprise they put me in a dormitory, not a cell,
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213011
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Jonas Griffin stared out the bay window as he drank his morning cup, his eyes gleaming with something between wistfulness and disdain at Reynold who sat patiently in the adjacent yard, leaning against the majestic oak tree that towered in its hundred year
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21301313
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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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21301514
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The mandatory is not / your friend
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212930
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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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212964
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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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212920
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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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2129119
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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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21281715
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When you prime tobacco the old way . . .
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212801
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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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21282118
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There can be no convergence./
There is only the talking that talks about/
an angle of sight nothing else can share.
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212800
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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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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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212785
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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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21262216
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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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