1383107
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Things get lost in Big John, too. I see the other guys throw jokes about his size at his body that wedge their way into his armpits or into the wrinkles of his laugh lines and disappear. I’m not sure if it all disappears to remind us how small we are,
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1108107
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Once you descend, the third rail/
hums its invitation
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79897
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I'm writing you this letter played on a cherry flute. I'm sending it along through the poem's cloud of incense. The only delivery system I still hitch up for long distance pitching. I'm writing you a letter you'll probably never read. Never…
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611117
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Like a small meteorite, a white cloud falls. The journey seems to have been long since it cannot spring up again, its wings being exhausted. Like a scared and shivering bird, it curls into my hand. Its apparent fragility prevents me from tightening my grip. A unique…
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103697
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She grew tired of waiting for her husband to give her a flower so she picked one for herself.
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1059114
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I thought of you todayand what you put me throughthe time you saidwe couldn't rest.
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111187
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She doesn't regret that they hadn't spoken. What did they have to say to each other, anyway?
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1925153
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Because they boil bananas and I fry them.
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1632244
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A woman’s hair is her crowning glory, my grandmother always said.
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113687
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There is a war, but is it not In my heart? There is a war, but You are not the reason. There is a War, but we're all doing what we can. There is a war, but it is not just Your fight. There is a war, but I Wished you still walked…
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119265
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This writers' conference (sponsored by VQR, which had run its banner ad atop the Fictionaut home page in the summer of 2014, which begins to explain both my attendance and this essay) revealed itself as an apt subject . . .
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148287
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Megan beat up on herself later over the unsaid.
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1668104
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Ma tells me not to put a tampon between my legs. For fear of cotton fornication.
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17277
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We fly in first-class on Piggy Bank's dime, arriving at eight o'clock on Friday morning. The limousine driver with chestnut skin holds up a sign with our names on it. We drink single malt scotch from crystal glasses as New Orleans jaunts past…
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1025126
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a little bitter for the better
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1175127
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strung from her window to a tree
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161044
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I folded my problems into pretty paper animals to keep me company. I set them on the Formica dinette set. I jammed some into cracks so they’d stand up straight: organized warfare
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1443135
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She slipped into a silky sheath dress, and stepped into black sequined heels just as the doorbell rang. Her date had arrived to take her to his much touted Art opening in town. Reaching under the bathroom sink for a final mist of hair spray she realized too late…
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1179117
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the swarthy terror network
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109677
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Content may contain ordinary, everyday, and all around average happenings.
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1297127
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as i sink down into the
shadows crawling like a worm
past cold bricks
centuries old in my blood
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890107
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don’t ask me to set my goals./
I have none except safe air to breathe,/
a reliable roof,/
something aromatic in the oven.
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128987
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"There are many dark places;but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."--J.R.R. Tolkien If the love never came you must have been Dragging your feet. If the hatred carved your…
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1177106
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We bought a grand piano at Steinway Hall after 9/11, chased uptown by the dust of death and awakening from dreams of miniature jumpers stuck in the icing of white wedding cakes
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102687
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In the quiet dark, fathers reappear.
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1630126
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Disability is indivisibility—all of us could be its members—unlike its affirmative action forebears who remain underrepresented, even as the groups’ selected contestants prepare to retire early, a distributed group whose specialty is American anthropology
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81096
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It hangs unspoken in the sadness he pushes through his harmonica, while his hands work the old, beat-up guitar that tries to be a Gibson for his fingertips.
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1633165
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Her eyes stared wide with panic, her teeth chattered intermittently with impressive intensity, and with her ineffectual stabs at the air she completed the portrait of distracted mania.
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1494147
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I knew it was just a matter of time...
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623106
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I lack the intellect, discipline,
and faith in anything
but our ultimate erasure.
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