2285 8 2
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"Michael has had no drink, no cigarette, no illicit drug and very little illicit sex since September 14, 1989."
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176233
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The night wrapped its arms around us as we drove west, taking the highway past Medford towards Philly. The kids were asleep in the backseat and we were both counting the mile markers, staring out the windows with quiet eyes. I listened to the drone of the…
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167410
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He was almost dying when I reached the hospital. I walked past the open automatic sliding doors into the lobby, almost vacant except a few people milling around, the nurses fighting sleep behind the desks while waiting for their shift to end.
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5352017
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Betty shakes herself out of her reverie and sprinkles a bit more salt on Frank's meatloaf. Over the last few weeks, usually when she's in the kitchen, her mind wanders to Florida. Betty loves Florida, loves the retirement community where her sister Esther lives.She pours…
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218431
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She threw the wine glass on the floor.
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138111
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Lester walked back into the house. He was hungry but didn’t know what he wanted to eat. Really, he couldn’t remember how to fix anything he wanted. He walked over to turn on the television, but couldn’t find the on/off button. Surely the damn thing had an
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145700
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Your father, his father, and his before that, your mother, her mother, and all the way back have kept a tradition by chance or by will to each have a baby (or several) until…
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112400
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I'm feeling almost better than you know A little bit better than the day before Waking up to a deafening scream Please, please don't hurt me no more Why do I feel like a lost dog? Staring outside the window pane How come I become dark? When the clouds begin to rain…
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117301
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I need to be commended,
despite the wine glass
that threw itself
at your sister's head
of rollers. Imagine a pear
in the deli meat aisle
ripening behind glass...
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121800
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Rob was having a hard time of it. His whole life was like that-- in and out of jail for assault, robbery and selling drugs. He tried to go straight. A career counselor, had set him up, with a job in a warehouse. But he just couldn't…
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77000
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I am so lost in thought
as I ride out of the woods
that I forget which way I ought
to turn, left or right; this can’t be good.
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161921
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He finished the omelet and started in on the short stack. He drowned the cakes in syrup.
-Never can have enough syrup.
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6700
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‘Sometimes I look down, over this railing –’
—cars zipping tiny and soundless, the roads curling and the roofs speckled with white-hot skylights, dark mottled patches of repair, no stakes, no people, no noise –
‘ –and I consider jumping. Sitting on
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156021
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Are you a hostile person who gets into trouble when you express your anger? Would you like to annoy the hell out of people and get away with it?
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42512415
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My life is life in shape alone./
The substance leaks away like blood/
removed by the embalmer’s art.
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190511
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He took a long, noisy sip from the glass of wine as he peered across the rim to see her walk by."Now SHE would never get our order wrong" he said to his two friends seated at the table with him.The two men looked at each other and laughed. It was obvious Johnny was…
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114500
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I would read her stories on quiet summer days as we sat along the river, just the two of us stretched out in the tall grass, hidden in the shade of the pine trees lining the banks of the Mullica while a gentle breeze cooled our skin. She liked the way I read to…
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16321
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...how he wished the will to live...
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153633
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He had a simple dream: He wanted to become a star, and not one of those tv stars because those die, those die all the time, and before dying they usually become terrible shadows of their former selves, vile creatures who exploit their own former glory...
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127962
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Of course, no one can control what goes on in an elevator.
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114600
|
While laying in his hospital bed recovering from a minor heart attack, Professor Martin Hellman reads details of an ancient book he has been given for translation--Biblos Melas, or, the "Black Book." Excerpted from the forthcoming novel "Minion Web."
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136644
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You are in a car speeding through Dublin towards the West year after year the journey uncoils past the same landmarks Kilmainham Jail strapped to a chair bullet to the brain on by the Rowntree Mackintosh factory where the black and yellow and orange and r
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162210
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Even when the sun is gone and things get dark, usually the moon comes to reflect some light of hope until a new dawn can emerge
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1697155
|
I thought, what are we talking about? Botox?
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137085
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Every encounter is a dance, every secret has its key
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134500
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I remember screaming and wanting to run from the living room that time you came home drunk.
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164565
|
go ahead
stick one more morsel
into that piehole
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103153
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I needed a job. They needed a writer without humanistic moral qualms to create slogans for the Human Annihilation Project
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174697
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Rory and Betty Sloan entered the first of 40 rooms in the new Motel 6 to place Holy Bibles in 40 night tables.
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123700
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Do you think your mom would come out and take off her shirt, the way Brandi Chastain did the last time the U.S. women won the World’s Cup?
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