2104 4 4
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Alma Tucker settled into middle age with the comfort that escapes most women. Her festival queen days gone. Along with her wispy waist and cherry blond hair, replaced by broader curves and graying tresses. She was content with the way age had changed her
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21041110
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When you were nine your head fell off in the playground. Dr Mort was called. He pasted it back on with PVA glue. You'd never know now.——When you were nine your arms turned into trees. Dr Mort worked his magic with the chainsaw. You still need light pruning once…
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2104146
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Imagine the poem written with a pistol at your head.
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210434
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We draw a treasure map in the sandwait for the waves to wash it awayI ask you not to leave me stranded hereIf I'm bound for hell, I don't want to be left behindThe sun breaks through the edge of infinityspills over the line, soaking the sky…
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210433
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On a corkboard in the entryway of the Leetonia Shurfine Market a curling handwritten sign said Room for Rent. Kitchen Living Room Laundry Privlages. $65 Weekly.
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210497
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"... I knew Willie had gone— out the back door or out the side window. I knew he probably slipped over the fence behind my house into Lou C.’s backyard..."
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210355
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Ishpeming straddles Lake Superior to Marathon, reaches into the water, pulls out a clump of frozen hotdogs, breaks them apart one by one, rolls them between its fingers, heats them on the thigh of its corduroy pants, and throws them into the sky. Comets t
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210386
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“Mules don’t like to dive, Esther.”
“I said maybe, Hugh. Maybe.”
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210331
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You never knew How to express What you didn't know You felt With your words You picked on You taunted You destroyed Did it help To feel yourself Did it work To disparage Those who were Innocent and young Blameless For living …
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210310
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As I was checking out with the receptionist, Dope came barging through the door and told the guy at the front desk that I needed to be booked for this sonogram “right away, like within the next 72 hours.” My hands started to shake and my lower body b
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21031412
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“I want to show you something pretty.”
She looked at me, chin on her chest, watery brown eyes looking up. Skin tags on her eyelids made it difficult for her to look as coquettish as she wanted. She tried to flutter what was left of her eyelashes, but syr
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2103129
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We were over Casper, Wyoming, when some terrorists tried to take over the airplane. They had concealed weapons.
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2103198
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YKK is a zipper manufacturer whose initials stand for Yoshida Kōgyō Kabushikigaisha. A boy told me (and I believed as a child) that YKK was my name in code.
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21021413
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2102118
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A friend of mine is killing me With all of her lies. If I die tonight, you can bet it's Because of her. A friend of mine Is killing me with those lit eyes like Twin pyramids holding up her rambling Blue skyline. Look I don't have to …
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210264
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In grief, I'd ride a slow train there with you, /
one hand in yours and one hand on the rail,
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21022315
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It's as if there are little men inside her head, wielding hammers.
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2102126
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The tadpoles flipped on the brown mud bottom. She dipped one out and held it near, seeing it in her belly, shaping arms and feet and a small, blond head. She set it back and stood, breasts out, arms up. The ducks in the weed, eyes hard like hungry boys, waited for bread.…
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210154
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The tall, standing woman with bright red lipstick, elegant at one time, you could tell, responding, “She has dementia,” pointing at her brain. “She was a Holocaust survivor.”
And the one they’re talking about turns as she’s pushing her wal
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2101109
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"Why didn't you tell me it was Halloween?" he asked. She shook her head. The doorbell rang.
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210152
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John Lipkin took a drag off his cigarette and rummaged through his desk drawer looking for pot. There wasn't any. He remembered looking last night, but he looked again now. There wasn't a damn thing, just some stems…
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210151
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Leave your dog and your dog-eared lovers at the door. I smile at the bouncer, pay my ticket, and wink at a slasher chick. She gets pumped on heavy metal gods and Kwaito
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210021
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When I ate with my girls, Bliss and Victoria, I would lift my head up and look at us eating until I could imagine him chiding me. “Our daughters are looking more and more like you each day,” he’d say. “Fat!” I didn’t feel like eating when I thought abo
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210021
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It’s always daylight there
My brother comes running down the sidewalk
holding out his arms and calling my name
He’s wearing suspenders. He’s gotten thinner
in heaven
He embraces me warmly
wanting us to be friends
I give up trying to re
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21002718
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. . . there is nothing so selfish as sleep.
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21002610
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I avert my gaze to the crab grass pushing through broken concrete, the spent condoms, the empty vodka nips rolling at her stockinged feet...
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209920
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“Nothing we have here can stop them,” the Lumi said, “We were hoping there might be something in your world we might try.”
“Even if we had something, how would I get it to you?
”We are working on that, in the meantime, will you help us?”
I
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20992614
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After each piece cancelled the other
the generals folded up their checkerboards,
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209920
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How curious that the thought arrived first in Portuguese; perhaps, after so many years, he was finally becoming Brazilian.
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209974
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You cheat with a stripper--joke I told to your wife. I didn't know that she couldn't take a goof.
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