2043 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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204388
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I know now, how she moves without verbs
after you crushed her into the river.
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204383
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When you last produced writing on a manual typewriter, was it before or after your first sexual experience, or maybe during? Manual or otherwise. Which do you recall with more enthusiasm...
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20421915
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as long as you have some snacks up there
I can be brave
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204241
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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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204200
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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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2042128
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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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204266
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Driving up to the Palisades after 9/11 for a meteor shower
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204221
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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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20421714
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When you move to the music of a woman
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204221
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...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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204032
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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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2040125
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The right is empty, waiting to receive the load like a catcher behind home plate.
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204086
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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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2040247
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I watched as the light fled
from your eyes,
No slowly dimming lamp,
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2040106
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He kind of enjoyed living by himself. It was nice and peaceful.
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2040153
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He stopped the shower and recounted his life, now Kin-less and plain.
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204097
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the observation, at the end, more/
important than the being there—
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203933
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salmon
maple syrup
horseradish
smoke detector
the list read, scrawled in purple marker on the refrigerator door.
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20392912
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Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.
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203900
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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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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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203953
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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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2039164
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Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.
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2038105
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I scare my daughter when she sleeps because she thinks I'm going to kill her.
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203873
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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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20381615
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• Don’t confuse the virtues of bananas with the virtues of banana bread
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203834
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Out the window is an empty birdbath, dry flaky concrete ring, no birds.
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203821
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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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203763
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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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