2128 19 9
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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.
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212873
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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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212863
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For some, a vertical pattern will evoke prison bars, for others, product bar codes.
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21281714
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When you move to the music of a woman
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21272416
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Veiled by tenuous clouds and dirty air,
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2127247
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I watched as the light fled
from your eyes,
No slowly dimming lamp,
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212766
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I hope you'll have the time to read this before your attention wanders.
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212711
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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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212783
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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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21262016
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Just bring me his head, that cerebral kiln of hot, ruddy verbiage and cadence.
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212684
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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.
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21262310
|
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?
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212696
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All of those lovelies, pitched on the ground, ignored and ready to rot.
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212510
|
It's dawn. It's quiet on the pond in the Public Garden. The light is calm, the pollution is mild, and everything is still,except for the occasional cruising taxi. It's the beginning of spring-- tulips out, leaves…
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212574
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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.
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212574
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212572
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A lowing cow cracked open the darkened room like the yawn of a gravid alien.
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21251210
|
Some believe the Scots were encouraged to emigrate, hired guns as it were, to Ireland to civilize that population.
If that's the case, we would see it as another evil English trick. In any case, we MacGowans are Scots Irish and Protestant.
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212500
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Momo told me not to mind her, but I did. At night, after he'd tucked me in, I could hear him on the phone in the living room, talking for a long time. Early this morning he woke me up and gave me my backpack. ‘Put some clothes in here', he said. ‘We're going on a trip.'
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21251716
|
Ed wants to watch the last half of the football game. His wife wants him to mow the lawn.
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212464
|
Riding in a pick-up-truck,
the radio wailing
some 'love em and leave em" country song,
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2123144
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"What I need to wear the ring for," I said to myself, "I already got his last name..."
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212392
|
You never thought you were capable of rape.
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212362
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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…
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212353
|
A strange and unexpected shift has occurred.
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212332
|
...and 55 words to tell you about it.
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212300
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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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212321
|
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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212253
|
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
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212100
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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.
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