2273 7 1
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It was a sloppy little factory town that could be beautiful, but never bothered trying. Sits on a big lake. More bars than churches, and too many of both. Racist. We hated anybody who didn’t believe in white Jesus
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30553253
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Picture a scene: Catholic School, circa 1987. In a well-ordered classroom full of future secretaries ...
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202121
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Jack, man in black, sporting manicured talons, his smile an iced knife.
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149711
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She clutched her fat rolls and tugged on a pant leg. "I'm so embarrassed! You caught me on a bad day!"
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139610
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4. If you wear size 13, you'll trip a lot.
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167031
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"On the podium at Pride, he owned that he'd loved taking his children to playgroup as he got to ogle all the breast-feeding mothers. "
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219300
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The kitchen I snuck out of seventeen years before kept fading to black and white, with this layer of something between me and them.
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97131
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It was a stupid thing, but one I'd gotten away with before. My bagel was stuck in the toaster, and I probed a knife down into the slot without unplugging the appliance. BAP!—sparks and smoke, and before I knew it, I was dead.
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119800
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and he'll be dead within a week
but i'll still be ordering a large black coffee
and smoking upwind
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177499
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Andalusia I. partners in sunset the hawk and I in ballet ..............................he:..........the small flame in the wind ..............................I:............the last tremor of grace the…
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136920
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Charley calls to say he hasn't heard from me. The blinds are gone, so I take a lipstick off the living room table and draw a circle around his head. I make a half-circle for his gut, a squiggle for the telephone cord. He can come over, he says, just to …
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252984
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Tell me your hero and I'll tell you what's cooking with you...
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19981311
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When she opens the door, I say hi and introduce her to my friend, a bottle of J.T.S. Brown. She laughs and tells me to come on in before I fall down.
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160730
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…she smelled of sunflowers.
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181021
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Naomi saw an ad in one of those slick circulars that came in the mail. ' Wigs by Paula."
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30163820
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One dinner party, two couples, three bottles of wine.
A moonbeam shone on the balcony. They felt a slight shifting under their chairs and heard a quiet scraping sound, then the apartment slid out from the building and lifted away.
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1848136
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...galaxies burst into an infinite slide-show of the absolute... god?
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2172116
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He rounds his back to stretch again, circles his arms like a ballerina, settles into the couch cushion behind him. “We made plans. Real plans. New York City. Live like bohemians. Fuck like chinchillas.”
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198151
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She takes her hamburgers medium rare and the pickles remind her of the taste of last night's penis before she stuffed the stranger's apologies in a jar.
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182352
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176852
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I know what he meant.
I've been in the 3 A.M. cream cheese.
I've known the hole in the bagel.
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172353
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Slept on a chair last night in the Springfield, Mass., bus terminal. It was March, and a dude in shorts asked: "Yo, you smoke trees?" I said, "Sure. Who doesn't?" He said, "You buyin'?" I said, "Nope, I'm going out of the country." He smiled and said, "Alright." He started…
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125920
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That September, he had enjoyed drinks in the company of now-dead utopians.
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149221
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Naomi hadn't expected them to come in such a big box. When the UPS man tried to hand it to her, she told him there must be some mistake, but then he pointed to her name¾NAOMI BROWN¾right there on the top. When she finally got off all that tape, she had another…
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127451
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It was the truth, you'd say. Then someone else would step in, someone who knew the situation. It wasn't long before the entire population of our sleepy little town became accustomed to your routine. It was even welcome in some circles. Those circles were made up…
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163611
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Later, your father stared, confused, at the empty spot where the wall paint layers ended in the shape of the old machines. He stopped coming in.
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32422218
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He stands at the 53 bus stop, boy shadow dust-cloaked and fading, jangling her keys in his pocket, echoes of a journey cut short.
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207052
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Having a single blurb on your book cover is like having a single friend in grade school. So I lied.
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150350
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Rumpelstiltskin cried
because you belong to me;
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120751
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There is a couple across the street who fight constantly. I feel bad watching them fight but they haven't had curtains since I moved into my new place and no one in this neighborhood can afford cable. I know that …
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