2137 9 7
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500 miles
all the way from Omaha
nine hours
on the back of a flatbed truck
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21371310
|
I talk wands and magic and how women aren't supposed to care,
but I do, and she talks length and girth.
Her fiancé has neither,
she makes an illustration with her pinky
and says that if they don't marry within the year,
she's dumping his ass
and we
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213711
|
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.
|
2137106
|
He kind of enjoyed living by himself. It was nice and peaceful.
|
21362016
|
Just bring me his head, that cerebral kiln of hot, ruddy verbiage and cadence.
|
213672
|
A lowing cow cracked open the darkened room like the yawn of a gravid alien.
|
213611
|
It broke through the surface of the suburban world and shattered it into pieces, fragments of dreams and amazement. She was not the same as she had been a moment before. It was an epiphany she couldn't put her finger on.
|
213500
|
See a girl like Lily sitting offstage in a wooden chair in a fourth-rate club somewhere, crying, holding on so hard to so little, and as it breaks your heart to watch; forgive me. Understand me. You can’t rescue us. We all deserve more.
|
2135247
|
I watched as the light fled
from your eyes,
No slowly dimming lamp,
|
21351714
|
When you move to the music of a woman
|
213510
|
Danica saw her hand with the ring lifted up by Oryn. Both of their eyes locked onto the red gem and Danica understood what Oryn offered.
|
2134144
|
"What I need to wear the ring for," I said to myself, "I already got his last name..."
|
2134199
|
I remember the tan guinea pig, dead of dehydration. Through the wire bars of her cage I viewed her body. She lay stiff on her side, stretched out, as if in her guinea-pig dream she had been running through grassland, open and close to the sky.
|
21332416
|
Veiled by tenuous clouds and dirty air,
|
213374
|
She began guiding Penny’s arms, whispering movements through her body. Memory and experience sang through every fiber of their being. The song had become her life.
|
213374
|
|
213387
|
Megan beat up on herself later over the unsaid.
|
213373
|
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
|
21331716
|
Ed wants to watch the last half of the football game. His wife wants him to mow the lawn.
|
213254
|
Jacabo gave the boy a can of beer with oxycontin and rat poison in it. He instructed the boy to drink and talk. Jacabo did this, fully aware that making ghosts was a costly enterprise.
|
213284
|
It calmed the guilt in my heart while kids reveled, laughed, and "made time" with the neighborhood girls on that final night of freedom.
No one would talk to those girls again.
|
21324722
|
Only strong personalities can endure such size, the weak ones are extinguished by it.
|
213162
|
Erwin came into the kitchen through the back door and went straight to the sink to clean up. Black mud and dried blood crusted his fingertips and caked the callused whorls of his knuckles. He used the round of strong-smelling soap he kept for…
|
213100
|
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.
|
213153
|
Once upon a time, my friend and I met a nanny pushing a baby carriage and reading an e-book. She wore a plaid dress, blue stockings and a white barrette. A set of wrinkles marred her tanned brow. Multitasking seemed too hard on her.
Inside the carriage
|
213182
|
Jerry tries to be funny saying, I think Charlie Brown should kick Lucy in the head when she pulls the ball away; either that or they start making out. Ewww, but they're both eight years old, Sandra says biting her lip, tying off her smile. Jerry won't focus on her…
|
213133
|
"Dad, I already told you about your wife. She’s not coming."
|
2131117
|
He was her summer fling, the first cock to crow when the sun rose over her tequila smile.
|
21312310
|
An Ayurvedic astrologer tells her that she is a child of India. Is a girl born in Indiana a mistake of just two letters on a Scrabble board?
|
213121
|
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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