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I think I’ll get a tattoo. Not just any tattoo, one I’ll regret. I’ll catch people peering at it, trying to interpret the twists and swirls of the black ink on my fair skin.
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129054
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They have their own homes to fill with bought and sold dreams. Their own babies to care for and feed. The world is big enough to have more layers than you can ever imagine. The lights will show you a way when you have turned too dark for your own…
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131774
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The world is slick as alabaster, taking the guesswork out of the rain. Junction Road moves like thick grease under the tires of my '89 Skyhawk. The old car's making a clicking noise somewhere underneath the high-beam switch and the damn…
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133653
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God’s hearing aid is missing
And apparently needs an enormous battery
But no one has the
heart to tell Him
because who wants to be
shouting at God?
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1946103
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Through the window, I see the police. Lots of them, trampling down the blackberry brambles. Something reeks.
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199754
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Valeria never whistled. Nor did she approve of people who did. One thing she had learned in her sixty-seven years was that people who whistled were crass. Butchers whistled. So did peasants.
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142052
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That contraption he’d invited her to pedal, somebody oughta market one of those. The closer you got the harder it got, and her feet kept slipping off the pedals. It was maddening.
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182774
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There was a time when she could quell the loathing that Fred inspired in her. She could force it down. Back then, for instance, when they’d been in counseling, the ball of hatred had only been a little, overripe orange - squishy and occasionally mushed
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145344
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“Gladys Miller!” the dog shouted. “Live a little. TiVo it.”
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366544
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You were watching TV when it began. That much is obvious, since you have always watched TV on Thursday nights, and Thursday was when it began for everyone in Polisville. Around 11 PM, a train on its way to a Nevada landfill jumped the tracks. It's a secure landfill, and the…
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132963
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When I arrived in heaven
Calling out your name
Running just on vapor
Leaving my old flames
I thought I saw you singing
Dripping from all sides
Crying like a rainbow
Reliving our old lives
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143752
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Jojo dolls & basketballs
a mindflex & pick-up sticks
Parcheesi and—no, not Parcheesi
a supersoaker, a Care Bear
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159654
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The first engine arrived and a fireman heavy with gear stumbled from the side railing.
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111853
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In the neon light and barroom shadows,
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127234
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But what “is” retirement? All of the previous sections in a life are full of detailed descriptions. But “retirement” is somehow left rather vague. One would think that retirement would be the long-awaited GOAL of life. But instead we are left with the
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98553
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Communism
Capitalism
Gism or Gysm, either way
Avoid anything with an Ism
Catholicism
Botulism
Socialism
Skepticism
If its got an Ism in it
Avoid it, okay?
(Advice for our newborn daughter)
Avoidalism is okay
Though
So you c
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75363
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I dreamt I was Vermeer
For just a little while
I took this photo of a criminal
A mugshot really
And claimed I had painted it
From memories of a previous life
He looked just like a Vermeer
With the light coming in
From the side of his fac
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184444
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Rhonda looks guilty as it is, don’t you think? That hair! And the unhappiness smeared across her face like war paint after a war.
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It performs the dialectic that intertwines real and ideal through her mounting concern about being choked to death then eaten by a very large pig.
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Christmas is here and there's work to do.
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“Sixty-seven responses!” Al Edelstein announces at the first meeting of the search committee. It has been just two weeks since Rabbi Feldman dropped dead of a heart attack and just a week since the congregation ran the ad: “Help Wanted: Orthodox Rabbi. Im
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21164
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124554
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Along with Bad Bunny
comes the reckless dancing
the ambulance chases
and the long, drawn-on faces
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life is a lucky thing, bountiful among the
drugs and flowers
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109134
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Estonia wore a liver milagro charm on a thin piece of rawhide around her neck and slept with her teeth in a jar. She was dreaming as she often did of the four children she conceived in Mexico. They had been born in bright colors and dust. Her first child Nina…
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116344
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Our Sun bites down on the eager yet pouting lips of the softly puffy looking moon, but a jealous & runny cloud interferes with this story line just long enough for a little bit of fun: a young dancing tree washes her gold and…
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Her skirt is so short, said the teenage girls to each other. I was 7 years old. I said: she looks like a slut. They laughed; I blushed. Later, the slut smiled at me. I tried to find the teenage girls but they were gone. I wanted to say: it's actually a pair of…
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109644
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There by the opposite doorway opening onto the thinly carpeted kitchen lay—well, what seemed to be all that was left of Miriam Flagellporte . . .
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She smoothed her hair with a hand that should have been the turning pages of a cheap dime-store novel. I watched her from under my eyebrows but kept my head fixed downward, pretending to pay attention to the 6 ½ narrow stiletto heeled black alligator pumps. Not easy to do,…
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