2119 2 0
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I made my way quietly out back and sat in Helga’s whitewashed porch swing, listening to the first faint sounds of big band music drift out of Helga’s open windows and into the cooling summer air. The darkness was moving in slow from the east, interrup
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2119 4 3
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...I grew up in a provincial town which at the time had no bookstore and no library — no library even at school...
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2119 12 8
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Two-way conversation with God.
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2119 18 9
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In my innocence and young mind, I thought that kiss would mean that someday we would get married
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2118 16 11
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He runs a mail-order business from a storefront and distributes a catalog of disappeared things.
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2118 5 5
|
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2118 4 2
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When you finally got blood from the hard stick
You spotted the backflash of red
And said Thank God. The woman’s legs and arms
Were everywhere, and you were in the middle
Holding her down with one hand while wielding
A butterfly in the other. You stuc
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2118 20 11
|
...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...
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2117 20 18
|
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2117 5 4
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You can’t take a chandelier on an emergency dash across a nuclear desert.
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2117 16 13
|
no one likes a bitchy cowboyhike up yer britchespull yer brim down'nshut up and ridestop making petsout of peevesand idolsout of gossipinsteadmake a hobbyout of yer horseand fer godsakesseason that saddle
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2117 9 9
|
I don't think dogs like to die with the pack.
The smell of them rotting brings trouble in the wild,
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2116 11 6
|
Down South now means August cold snap,
the forties roaring my wool cap
off my head.
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2116 0 1
|
“I heard your dad took out the Dairy Queen drive-thru,” said Pat.
|
2116 1 0
|
I am wearing stolen socks. Not because I haven't any of my own, and not because they are an exact fit. Only because they soothe my emptiness inside.
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2115 19 11
|
No snippet to see, here. The piece is so short a snippet would be the whole thing.
|
2115 12 3
|
....sees the beginning of a new day through the closed shutters, hears the guard washing up at the sink, feels the beginning of a cry in his throat.
|
2115 6 1
|
To my right, blank stares interchange with closed eyelids on an unkempt face. The minutes drip into the endless sea of night outside the window, each time creating a deeper blackness.
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2115 9 5
|
so for penance, the priest gave me the full twelve Stations of the Cross
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2115 7 3
|
Everyone runs to the plane but me. I get the last seat (middle of 5), crush men’s bags on my way. I’m white & female. They glare.
|
2114 3 1
|
I have never met Joe’s brother, of course.
|
2114 3 3
|
salmon
maple syrup
horseradish
smoke detector
the list read, scrawled in purple marker on the refrigerator door.
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2114 9 6
|
Okay, no freaking out. I mean, this isn't a suicide note. This is suicide fiction.
|
2114 2 1
|
...I told Uncle Lou I thought it (trans-gendering) looked like a thoughtful way of occupying the world. It was a personal triumph, for some individuals, over the destructive affects of denial. Besides, it hurt no one, and it didn’t destroy property. I alw
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2114 5 5
|
Your voice is yearning,
Like a sad song on the radio,
A yarn spun to make hearts break.
|
2114 1 1
|
True love may last forever, but the most I've ever gotten out of a lab assistant is two years, five months, three weeks, twelve days, and fifteen hours. And he was the exception.
|
2113 8 0
|
The trainers looked at her and smiled and they were still one creature with four legs and two heads. The old man’s left eye moved in sync with the younger one’s right eye.
|
2113 6 2
|
It’ll die in there and the stairwell’ll stink for weeks, Greg says in the car. We’re quiet, considering that.
|
2113 12 10
|
The coffins pile up gnawing dust on the glass panes to the rims of my binoculars. Shadowy cracks of stifling proportions, gliding over my eyes a requiem of mahogany. At dawn they heave between the workers’ hands, leave their resting places for a green tra
|
2113 6 3
|
Doc and I talked for several hours. When I told him Mona was pregnant, he turned his head and looked at me. “Who's the father?” he asked. Don't know, I said. Mona didn't know, either.
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