3721 9 3
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The warrior would prepare for death by writing a death poem. Sometimes the samurai would begin the ritual and write his poem in blood.
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37203519
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The gull put its foot down, stretched its wings out and swept into the salty breeze.
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371711
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IT SNOWED all day the Monday after Thanksgiving. After supper and homework, my brother, Will, and I sat in the narrowly opened window of the second floor apartment where we lived and watched the older kids run their bicycles down Sweet's Hill and hit their brakes at…
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3716148
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My father failed in business in the 1950's when Dutch Elm Disease killed the elm trees in our Kansas town. He owned a fabric store on a brick street lined on both sides by elms, the doomed trees that transformed every Midwestern town into a magical kingdom and sidewalks and…
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37122529
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While Kate practiced the piano in the tiny third-floor apartment, Wiley cooked dinner, jogging in place in front of the stove.
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370900
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“Mortal,” it said, and its voice made the cobbler’s soul tremble. “Why do you disturb our peace? It is late, and you should be abed.”
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37031613
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I'd kill a gas attendant in Playa Del Mar.
You'd read stained romance novels in motel rooms, while I oiled the gun and laughed on the phone, to no one.
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37024037
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It is late in the twentieth century and I'm on my hands and knees for you.
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3701106
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A new constellation in the sweet hereafter.
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36995127
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The night my mother dies we'd watched Solaris at the Quad Cinemas Afterward Hauser and I videotape each other, ask probing questions like where do you go when you die, and what is God, and who are you now? …
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369532
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“Where do you want your mustache?” Melanie asked. “You can have it on the side, you know, or, if you prefer, across your labia, in which case it will also look like a cross?”
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36932218
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How to not be a redneck? Basically, it is a matter of volume, ancestor worship, respect for the truth and a command of the English language.
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36932217
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It was war without beginning or end.
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36903215
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She's having trouble remembering the names of things.
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368423
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It’s that, really, nothing else could be
Sleep and Poetry, Mr. Keats
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36798543
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"You," he says, "Sit in here."
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367961
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Listen, I don’t want to get all teary and here I am getting all teary, but it’s not what you think. What it is is that I think about that very first time, when she comes out of the bathroom completely naked and she looks like heaven’s very best neig
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3678209
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My son thinks he's French.His accent was cute at first, but it's starting to get on my nerves. If he asks for another glass of Beaujolais I'm gonna go to jail for child abuse.Yesterday, I walked upstairs to make him turn his new Jacques Brel album down and I swear it…
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367495
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367100
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A cellphone vibrates ineffectually against unfeeling skin. One last rivulet of blood slowly oozes down the wall as it dries. The rest of the room is still.
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36627746
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I squeeze the soft bag tighter between my legs.
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36551811
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When I finally met the time broker, he sat at an antiquated mahogany desk with no computer. He looked up and waited for me to speak. "Time for sale," his ad had advertised, and I was ready to pay
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365527
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which consisted of me being shoved down a flight of stairs. Thanks to a PELL grant in 1996, I was triumphantly run-over by a family Winnebago in the critically acclaimed, Run-Over. This lead to a series of “happenings” I conducted in alternative space
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365494
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It was there, and then it wasn’t, the victim of a magician or a swooping seabird.
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36535229
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If you consider yourself neither little nor big, remember that anything large, colossal, macroscopic, ample, sizable, blown-up, bulky, mighty was once small, lesser, minute, tiny, dinky, gnomish, weeny or lilliputian.
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36487938
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The repair man is conscientious in this as he is with all things, light with his fingers and his tongue. His hair falls over his eyes as he works her.
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36461910
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He played real good
But never looked
At no one
Strong guitar
Weak knees
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364111
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"This is where the children play," the woman said cheerily.
She gestured toward the flat bed of a pickup truck. The edge was surrounded by a makeshift wooden fence that looked like it had been made out of old orange crates.
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36381210
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Brian stands. The edge of the tablecloth goes up with him, clings to his belt buckle, so he must beat it down. Everyone looks at him. The two old ones at the end glare at him coldly, four stupid eyes.
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36382214
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I used to score girls by taking them on a ride past Frauenstein, up on a hill where you could see the trees, the whole lot of them sparkling white and pink in the breeze.
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