940 4 1
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As kids, we grew up in a city that we swore was suburbia. Nearly every street had a few houses with a kid or two that was missing their front teeth. There were kids we knew well and kids we'd wish we'd known but they lived a few…
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108533
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" . . . it's overcast with scattered rain along the Wabash River as I approach the federal correctional complex . . . "
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106221
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137320
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A spark is a gouged word: stewed to annihilate, scrambled, botched in a pot to dry. Lead us to the quiver, let us tremble. Noon, we paw nails under rugs, run fingertips over books, rip cupboards from hinges and spiral open the machine, for the creature is near the roof or…
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150106
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The only way to get better at this writing thing, thought Melvin...
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77851
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Deslauriers taught that of the five derogatory items a girl could be—bitch, slut, tease, frigid, whore—tease was the worst. Having a German Shepherd at home protected Liz. My family had a cat, female and black.
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120100
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Emi stood up and turned to Mayumi. She did not know what else to say. There was a sense of helplessness.
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137453
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Even though it was late November, it still bloomed. Extravagantly. Obviously it had no shame, obviously it reveled in its own beauty.
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963107
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May the timing belt stand the stress again
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18362824
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The locals cut stone in quarries, built elevators at the Cummins plant in Columbus, or brewed shine back in the hills between Bean Blossom and Gnaw Bone.
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61721
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There had been a whore house at the spot for a century, since the cowboys drove cattle up the Chisolm Trail to town, to be loaded onto boxcars bound for the Chicago stockyards.
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128643
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There was a body in the backseat, and they drove through the highways at night to a late night radio show that played 80’s power ballads. He said: “I am really glad you’re here for me.”
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98621
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By the time I got back to the island only Henson was still alive. He didn’t speak; the gun said it all.
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17813022
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I wake up in the morning and write her name on the white paper napkin I always place in front of me at the kitchen table as I have my first cup of coffee. I write it throughout the day. Twelve or fifteen times. I've done this for exactly twenty-three days. I always…
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143052
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What is writing, Rick B.? You appear in your photo to be more handsome than your first brother. Sudden memory appears: "Question mark? Curvy: cock. Exclamation! Stiff: prick."
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116901
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Chet Baker mourns for you, New Coke mourns for you, Roddy Piper mourns for you, 8-track cassettes of Humble Pie and Bachman Turner Overdrive mourn for you
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104231
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That's my memory, kept and clutched as with a sixth sense, that it was a prim Oriental afternoon, with the pink streaks in the sky going God-knows-where down across the park, but very far away. Ghostly, melancholy travellers. Birds met and crashed headlong somewhere up…
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136231
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At five a family relative took my life away from me and no one cared
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20642
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Some places she knew better than others; some battle sites were more notable or more recent, and always the memories came back on the flood.
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10674
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Moral Dilemmas at Harvard
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96320
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I spent the summer of 2001 in disguise;
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109142
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Does he pack you a lunch when you're running late for work? Even when you're not running late? Does he insist on regular medical check-ups, for which he'll pay because you don't have insurance? Will he disapprove of your objectionable behavior, and not turn the…
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102641
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“You're bendable,” he said, and then there was this silence as we looked into the space in front of us. I understood what he meant right off and thought it a gift to speak to someone that did not get the words exactly right, but in not doing so, got…
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968107
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96900
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The sun was bright, warm and blew through my hair like the wind.
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94733
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Rocky looked iron-built, tall and lean, not round like April. Russian lawn ornament, I said, mistaking the thought as mine.
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129711
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A procession of our somber youth—
stoned and stunned and
broken beyond repair—viewed
the boy carved of putty.
The mortician painted him
stuffed him, presented him
to us, the semi-living.
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99000
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In the tumbled-down now there's too much material, culled from pretty boys that don't notice me and tattooed ones that do, and I'm certain there's at least one dreamer soaking eyes into me who knows all the twisted lyrics invoking pretty little horses.
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114032
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she sees that no one has considered her needsshe feels left out, and so she strikes outon the offensive, nostrils flaringpoints her finger and makes her caseshe has been wronged, justified in her angershe will not back downthe accused one is hurtstrikes back with her own…
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115511
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always thought you'd show up with a good friendly grin, your heart full of gnosis and the rest of you dressed in denim or terrene hues,back from across the world to honor our sacrosanct thing maybe it would be in the wind chiseled afternoon,or the dusk by tables…
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