1277 3 3
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Satan is a wide-eyed Pollyanna mime who communicates with a ventriloquist dummy that corrects my grammar, speaks in internet acronyms, tells me that I’d be a lot prettier if I just smiled more and lost fifteen pounds, and nags me about how all my problems
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12882112
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We lie sleepless at night, enraged,/
and finger the keyboard
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13831211
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21663
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134377
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I spent most of those days in my car. Stashed in the trunk was a cache of precious stones, neatly sorted and separated, bound in smooth black velvet inside a smooth black briefcase.
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118963
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". . those incandescent secrets she would
pepper in. The sister who ran away."
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17611712
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The Gothic-filigreed gate creaks as a guard closes it behind the little girl in the ruffled dress. Standing there in the morning fog, on the sidewalk outside the reform school, she looks remarkably like Shirley Temple. Dimpled, chubby face. Pretty, party dress. Her…
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112255
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Eat blueberries every day and you'll live to be a 92 year old mogul. Really.
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99122
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Many weddings took place at the foot of the Astronomical Clock Tower. One every hour, on the hour. It turned out these were set-up photo shoots for things like men’s cologne, brocade bridal gowns, and smoked carp. At night we wandered around the many
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112943
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—Strip down to your shorts. Put on this gown, open to the rear.
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105411
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a man and a woman in a room at the end of the world.
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1404104
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Jasmine as skeined skins… of liquid hers, by willow courts, the lychee's water wains: as apple-moats flush fawn in russet light, through cherry floats, the leopard-dots of dawn. Branch to branchlet green …
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142478
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of any cautionary tale is somewhere found rolling around in your own sweet voice for me. Your sound's still listing there inside my wobbly head. My head is too often in my open hands, grinning behind its face-mask like a parade on…
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111722
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Happy Birthday to me.
It takes just a second on waking to remember,
It's June but it feels like December.
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14422011
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We invent our beauties//
as we find them and engineer/
our horrors
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94000
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Lilly was anything but a white flower. Her skin had been blackened and burnt. Charred legs and arms stuck out like tiny tree limbs, the knuckles on her fingers barely covered by skin. The child’s face is frozen in the beginnings of a scream. She seems anc
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110444
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It began the night my parents took my brother and I to see The Vikings at the drive-in and the trailer for The Girl Can't Help It came on the screen, introduced by the completely acceptable Tom Ewell, which the folks could swallow, he was one of them, but as soon as…
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100212
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As a boy, he had little hope of ever becoming anything.
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21164
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1769107
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Carthage, Rome subdued:/itself, Rome never long tamed./Memento mori.
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13741312
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102933
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I thought
we ended things a long time ago
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84432
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Let’s see. February. Bad month. Made 42 cents on book sales. Sherry’s mom died. 98 years old. Holocaust survivor. Everybody’s dying all around us, it seems like. Somebody told us a portal has opened and people are making a dash for it. Hmmm. Portals. I wo
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1237119
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A cheap pocket knife was the only sharp I carried in my backpack and they allowed me that. The man with the pot tattoo on his neck said, “All of us here needs some type of knife. You gotta cut up your food. We don't…
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118085
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—Jesus, that bastard has everyone in his pocket.
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94100
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Watching the surroundings, the school proceeded on with no threat in sight. The Circle of Four entered inside Azure’s classroom where she sat next to a window.
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128567
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The last night, I shivered in bed until three a.m.,
the blankets wouldn’t work,
or the socks,
or my tears,
but I reassured my heart
that my next love would be warmer.
He was.
And our air conditioning bill was so high we could’t afford it.
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1341158
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Grasping for control over
social consciousness Because cigarettes are too deadly
and so is anorexia
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1539109
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I ordered biscuits and gravy
at the Sunset Grill,
Just before the Amber Alert
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20584
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