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108721
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In college, I made friends with my Jewish roommate. Her name was Leah and she was from Brooklyn. When she asked me home with her for Thanksgiving, she mentioned we could go to synagogue together. I asked if there would be other black people there. "No," Leah…
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81943
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On the phone I asked my mother how she was doing.
“I’m getting old,” she said. “Going slow. But getting there. I’m ninety-four!”
My mother was always 94, when she was really 93. I remember she was 93, right after she turned 92. And 92 when she was
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95125
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The Sobriety Group met at four every Wednesday night, just in time for the seven members to get a good table at Patrick's bar to drink beer by six. “Beer's not really even alcohol,” laughed one and then all. …
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96042
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Jersey's ex-girlfriend calls him on a Saturday in the fall and asks if he'll help her find her cat. She says it ran off on her while she was taking it for a walk in the park. He thinks for a second about asking her why she was taking a cat for a walk in the first…
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141200
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A poison bouquet of Merlot and brown floor muck bloomed in Seth’s nose. It’s one thing to sniff a freshly decanted red and another thing to shower in it.
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109521
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Up ahead I saw clusters of people standing silently under the trees. They seemed to be just waiting there. More than 100 people lined up in the cold and dark, not moving.
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110086
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They clog the skimmer basket/
and fill the small Polaris bag.
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67500
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Hello, writers, readers, friends, discerner's of subtlety, freedom fighters for truth, emotional fairness and proper punctuation. I am soliciting your feedback on my answering machine message. I want this to be an answering machine announcement to audio-book…
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1422108
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Half-pint Ball canning jars, each labeled in earnest capital letters, took up a whole wall of Teeny’s bedroom. Inside each jar was air she had collected from some place important to her life.
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90831
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I dreamed I might one day become the numero uno tango singer in Boston.
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132352
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Yesterday morning I sank to the depths of hell and barely crawled out in time. There is no answer except possibly death that will find me relief from his distant presence. I am free but yet I am not and I slowly sink into a hollow world where nothing hurt
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80320
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God love him, she used to say. you never noticed it much at the time because it is just something like a habit. a benevolent habit. around through the years and decades she went like that. God love him, she used to say, if she saw someone resting peacefully, of if…
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151953
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“No names,” she said. “I am the mysterious woman, and you are the handsome stranger.”
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928135
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Pine nerves spike and row.
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98896
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I'm mucked now for sure. No one's going to discover my difficult poems in a locked away desk drawer somewhere after the dying fact. I remember how it feels to be knocked out by someone standing next to me in a simple white dress. This…
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103510
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at the front of the bus/ sways a white-veiled woman:/ gnarled hands upon/ a bag of palms,
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117398
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Over his usual ham sandwich and skim milk for lunch Uncle Waldo used to always say, “Going out in the dead of night without a flashlight is dangerous.” But I knew what I was doing. After dark, I'd slip out and sneaker on down the path to take a dip in a…
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109801
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Ben followed Jean-Claude’s white Fiat. Every time Ben shifted gears, he was reminded of Arris’s punch.
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86622
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We’re safe as houses/
and unmoved. We grow/
accustomed to the sound
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4610
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Peter had recently cracked his tooth chewing ice. It was the top left molar, not the far back one, but the one just in front of that. His dental insurance covered most of the extraction but none of the implant. An artificial tooth was considered cosmetic, and they…
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127211
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of Jim Beam when I was maybe fifteen. Or anyway old enough to admire the lesson.
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128455
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You will never know how much it hurts
When someone else touches your face.
But I also know how much you count on others
To pull the slivers out of your heart.
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100120
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Angelo stood to the side and lit a cigarette.
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92111
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I held the steam and scrubbed it. How do you do that? asked Willy. How do you scrub steam? It is so, you know, diaphanous. I said to Willy, because Willy was a good man and listened with both ears, we adapt to the heart's convulsions. I send my grammar to a…
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105106
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86200
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Monday MorningI wake slowly. My breath still escapes me. He's asleep on the sofa, legs hanging, hand hanging, lips hanging, a river of saliva somewhere. He tries to be the one that's okay when I'm not, but really he's just as bloody as I am. I wait til he starts to…
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116521
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Lucy shrugs into the corner of the train's seat. She envelopes her IPod in both hands as if she's praying or holding a conch shell: safe, secure like when she visited a Morcombe beach in the school holidays. The only giveaway's the white headphone cord.
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102923
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I, Seer of the Stars, Cartographer of the Cosmos, / measure my mass, and to whom do I owe this woe...
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27784
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It’s just a joke, give them a poke, electric jigger in the hand
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