1989 16 16
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WITH A BOW TO DOROTHY PARKERWhen his fingers sped along the keys, I'd need to sit. I'd such weak knees. I thought him charming, tall, and able, then he overturned the table. Chili, crackers, cheddar cheese crashed on me-he'd been displeased. I…
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198900
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This is Chapter 2 of my serialzied novel Girma Dali. The title character reflects upon his youth and the young boy, Benga, who mentored him into adolescence.
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198984
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Mimi: Santa, I am so down with taking a number, but I really can't have you reading that particular story.
Santa: Let me be the judge of that. I am Santa. I give presents to kids.
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19892916
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a world of probability against plague
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198865
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I. Sweet Anthill The anthill is in front of my house. It started with a cupcake I dropped on the ground, frosting first. The ants started to congregate, carrying sprinkles and cake crumbs into the deep sidewalk crack. A week…
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198821
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I built a house in the middle of the ocean. I used sunlight for nails. Wind for wood. Stars for chandeliers, the moon for a doorknob.
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198830
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After surviving the first night in the hospital, I was put into a shared room to save on expenses, and to make room for the deluge of new cases that were coming in, and that was when I made friends with my roommate, Tommy. He was a boy about the sam
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198898
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My brother died in his sleep almost two months ago. He was 25. He was addicted to pharmaceuticals. Two days before he died, he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed his truck into a highway sign. It was the last thing he owned. He had been living with m
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198831
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Picking up a perfect stranger—perfect meaning dead, in this case—and shaping him into the man you’d want him to be is not so easy.
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19881917
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It felt like I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, like I’d walked into a house that looked like mine, but belonged to someone else.
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1988109
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The winner was some kid from Ohio or Oklahoma -- one of those states that begins with an "O" and ends with a yawn.
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198774
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You want to read, you know where to click.
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198721
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I can't rememberI woke up in the hotel room lying on the double bed staring at the ceiling. The room was painted white with one window, overlooking a brick wall, shut tight so I couldn't open it. The door leading to the outside looked appealing so I got up out…
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198700
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The road that passed through the swamp near where the cemetery stood, that is, the road that passed by the cemetery that stood near where the swamp lay—but no, that’s not the case, because that’s not the same road. If I’d been on THAT road—
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198775
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Came to admire Kiyoko Matsumoto. Japanese. Aged 19. Lesbian. 1933. Jumped into a volcano.
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1987158
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If This Were Baltimore East A spray of change in the lilies and loose rubber, she pulled close to the wall. She smiled at the trucks, her handful of loot. Hallelujah, he said, converting. West Like 4 miles of cakes, they counted…
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19861810
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She was a forward-motion girl. She never bothered to learn to walk as a baby. Instead, she stood up and ran.
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19861710
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The leaves are telegrams sent from the branches to the wind, saying, “it's over stop don't send kisses stop forget me.”
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1986179
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I turned on the television last night, and one of the networks had a segment about a girl with no nose.
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1986104
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When we lived in the attic we were make-believe.
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1986128
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I got 3 good hubcaps
That oughta be enough
You can take away my house
You can take away my stuff
Just leave it on the curbside
With my beat-up Cadillac
Got my 3 good hubcaps
I ain’t never coming back
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1986149
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It's eerie. There are no birds. My friend and I take our morning walk in a bubble of silence.
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19861411
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I'm sure someone somewhere must havefelt something like it before. Imean I've never been able tohave this kind of deep longing asif you might want to forget everythingyou know. I always figured that funny stuff onlyhappened to folks in a foreignfilm. Not to some guy…
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198663
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The Operations Management Guru was visiting the twenty-fourth floor on Tuesday, and everyone at the company was wicked with fear.
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198500
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“This is a Kneeling Bus.” They’re all kneeling buses, why do they even have to say that? Almost every person gets off in the front now when it says it even says right on the bus to please move to the back and exit from the rear side doors. I hate having t
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198530
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198576
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The trouble with paper horses was not how flimsy they were when you were flying them, reigns in hand, high enough above the treetops that falling would mean more than a bruised knee.
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198584
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When I was thirteen and still lived in the desert I saw a ghost woman at the top of a dry waterfall in the foothills.
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198522
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After sprouting boobs and a vagina before her sixteenth birthday, a girl watches her divorced father fall from parental grace by drinking ten tequila shots and baring it all for the neighbors to see on his birthday.
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1985126
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“Jesus fall the second time. You want a map? Ten shekels.”
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