1259 6 4
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Mum and Dad are dead, though I'm the only person who has noticed. They're sipping their tea in the kitchen. Dad keeps coughing up maggots. Mum's face looks like a cracked mirror: I see myself in it, broken, dark. My brothers carry on as normal. They huddle by the TV,…
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118355
|
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144943
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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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112744
|
They pull up to the curbside and he jumps out
to shake the hands in that familiar men’s
grasp/shake they do when saluting each other.
If that isn’t his daughter it should be, the one
sitting in his car, with her door wide open.
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158764
|
Outlined against the thinly layered darkness of the room, there is a silhouette of a small boy with his feet pulled up to the chin, failing to hold its own against the thousand stares from the deep violating the stillness of his room, their long familiarity with the…
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191971
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In 1978, a computer program became privy to my grandmother's most secret thoughts.
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139763
|
“I guess I'm enchanted,” I'd written on another occasion.
“Then why don't you ride out here and save me? Is your horse lame or something? Maybe you could just kill me and make us both happy.”
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83554
|
At least the cephalopods on their planet manage to comport themselves with some dignity, as well as demonstrating some actual intellectual acumen.
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156993
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During what's called "Children's time," one day at church Sarah slides her left foot halfway out of her tiny ballet slipper to show Davie her toenails are painted the same soft pink as the inside of her shoe. "Look," she says. "My…
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204773
|
Bike shops, vintage shops, after hour bar shops
|
140864
|
I allow myself one hour every two weeks. Devoting 335 of my 336 hours to her and the kids is beyond dutiful.
|
194463
|
Doc and I talked for several hours. When I told him Mona was pregnant, he turned his head and looked at me. “Who's the father?” he asked. Don't know, I said. Mona didn't know, either.
|
133184
|
She loves you when your words leave her dirty, semi-transparent, at times, overexposed.
|
97155
|
Here's to the new, trying ever so hard but not too hardto have an audience with their own personal God ontheir own super duper terms, wonder kids. Aren't theybeautiful, one of a kind cells, Ladies and Gentlemen? Thepaint job alone is worth the…
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164755
|
While the other kids blew bubbles, Maddy clung to my neck. She didn't cry or scream, and she held on loosely, not with the death grip some kids have. For five Wednesday afternoons, Maddy wrapped her pudgy arms over my shoulders and rested her bottom on m
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132374
|
The marble, it's just there.
I can't explain
how it got there
(or when),
all I know
is that everything
is in that marble.
By "everything,"
I mean every
thing. Your breakfast?
It's there.
|
182684
|
None of us ever thought this would happen.
|
110345
|
Their relationship had proved volatile. The husband had gone missing. The wife had gone dead.
|
125674
|
She’d reached me after running through the directory, alphabetically. Apparently no one in the a’s or b’s or c’s before me would talk to her.
|
128344
|
I planned to wear this shirt, /
blue, black, and white stripes, /
collar and pocket,
|
133573
|
Shit, I guess I'm gonna hafta
|
121044
|
I’m up to my kneecaps
in mockery and swill, and …
Excuse Me,
I’m Writing a Poem here?
Thank you. Sheesh!
As I was saying,
I’m up to my kneecaps in mockery and swill.
And I meet someone who
names all his fish after
people he doesn’t l
|
180182
|
Four in the morning. I was awake because I'm always awake. There were little fog-halos around the streetlights.
|
104054
|
Those resting in clusters of bones, Cradled in ashes of what once were homes.
|
362801
|
I retrieved the book from the middle of the room and set it in front of her. "Look," I said. "If we open the book up again at the beginning, Charlotte's alive. She'll always be alive in the book."
|
110944
|
Through the lonely night
All the roads are breathing
While somewhere on the road
The American soul lies bleeding
The past is all in yellow
The future’s all in blue
While living in the moment
Has lost its rosy hue
|
171354
|
It is late at night and you lean / over me to make sure your alarm is set.
|
159245
|
. . . a visitor from the preceding century would have been aghast to the point of vomiting to behold the regard with which pandas were now held almost universally.
|
107154
|
|
135664
|
It was 6 a.m. when the phone next to the bed awakened Francesco.
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