2041 1 1
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A 1960’s of walking sugar beet fields to remove the rogue bolters by hand and on other days painting the ironwork of cattle sheds with red oxide. Then a 1970’s when the self-inking explosion of tattoos on his hands and then his body began.
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20402018
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20401714
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When you move to the music of a woman
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203986
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The Ocean used to be ours. When the stars were still fire and they were the only light burning though the dim, hazy nights, the ocean was ours. Before the smog, and the lights that were carried by the men who rose from the sea, the ocean was ours. We…
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2039247
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I watched as the light fled
from your eyes,
No slowly dimming lamp,
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20391311
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He had her pinned to the back seat, expressing his love. Do you love me? she whispered in his ear. Do you, do you, Jimmy Dale, do you love me? His only response…
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2039106
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He kind of enjoyed living by himself. It was nice and peaceful.
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203921
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A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?”
“Do I know you?”
“It's Bill.”
The side of his little brother's thin face
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2039153
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He stopped the shower and recounted his life, now Kin-less and plain.
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2038125
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The right is empty, waiting to receive the load like a catcher behind home plate.
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203841
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I'm delighted to report that I've come up with my own school of thought. It's called, "Dress Like a Cat Until You Get What You Want."
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20382912
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Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.
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203800
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[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…
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203800
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Azure walked through the fog as though she were walking to class. Her hands swayed through the mist and felt the thickness of the cloud through her fingers
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203821
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“Hear that?” asks my wife Amy. Books in hand, we relax on our flagstone patio. A shaft of late-day sun borrows through the maples' leafy canopy and deposits a dazzling, sunlit pool on Amy's lap. …
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203876
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His toenails were so long they curled under and into the black leathery pads of his feet. They lightly clacked on our linoleum, tap shoes made of thick petrified roots. He didn't seem to mind.
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2038128
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The blue Victorian at 1145 White Street shifts in its foundation, creaks, and settles in for the night. The girls are bundled into their beds. My wife, too, has gone to sleep. I’m alone in the kitchen, steeping chamomile tea, coughing phlegm into the wr
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2037105
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I scare my daughter when she sleeps because she thinks I'm going to kill her.
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203732
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Rockin' Joe Heath stumbled into the stairwell in nothing but a black Zildjian t-shirt, shushing himself, trying to see right, pounding head. He recalled the old lily pattern of the wallpaper and something about the tattered edges…
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20371615
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• Don’t confuse the virtues of bananas with the virtues of banana bread
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203753
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She wants her mother back and all I can give her is this—over and over. She doesn't want my mouth, wants no kissing anywhere even. Just this. Like this—quiet and rough. Quiet because her stepfather is napping in the bedroom next to…
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2037164
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Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.
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203721
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... red lipstick shiny in the bar's light, raven-colored hair spiky and toussled. Jen opened her mouth to say something, stickiness of her cherry Chapstick separating with her lips ... and the girl leaned in and started kissing her.
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203663
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At night, instead of sleep, there were new and secret pleasures. Half-awake lessons in dexterity, in the limber material of human life.
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203673
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My favorite was a red bowler, a man's hat, which I never dared wear outside my tiny bedroom. My three brothers wanted it too much to take that kind of a risk. They'd poke me with various sharp objects: the serrated edge of the bread knife, the rusted TV
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2036209
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My mother’s old china no longer reflects. It’s value is now estimated as drywall.
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203634
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Out the window is an empty birdbath, dry flaky concrete ring, no birds.
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203573
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His wings were down when he got into the truck. It was a used UPS truck we’d bought from someone in Berkeley, and we painted out the letter “S,” so that it just read “UP.”
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20351918
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He was a tenth grade / messiah, famous for acts of attrition.
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203500
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But there, up the street, just coming into the corner of the window, someone was in the middle of the road. Walking literally down the middle, dragging one leg like it was heavy or broken, carving a fat line next to the skinny one the good one made.
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