1323 7 3
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-for Franz, the least understood comedian of all We all knew that Marissa's college boyfriend was ugly — there was the way she answered our mother's pestering "Is he cute?" with a stalling "Um, well..." and then there was the fact that she hadn't posted any photos…
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117754
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Aubrey pulled close the wool cloak that used to belong to a pilgrim and wondered if some of that saintliness and pardon might rub off. The mail was late and the bushes damp, but at least years of living in the woods had taught Aubrey to avoid thorns…
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165253
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The summer everyone read Faulkner, I read Hemingway. Out of spite.
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116183
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The particles of dust didn't want to be looked at
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127954
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105844
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The Managers are always to be found in twos or threes, lumbering greyly.——If you pass the Managers in a corridor it's a good idea to say hello. They will probably return your greeting, as best they can.——The Managers conduct meetings. They sit at the…
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102132
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157374
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My mother told me never to trust girls who speak from the side of their mouths. But Kat, with her rainbow bracelets and flat vans, can't speak any other way. A creature of A.D.D. and zip up leather, studded belt and the next No Wave, has mistaken me for the last…
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126143
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I'd never seen a dead person before, let alone one that was living just
seconds earlier.
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58454
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(Sung to the melody of "Ghostbusters")When your prose is weakMetaphors clichésWho you gonna callGhostwriters!Characters they speakNot much to sayWho you gonna callGhostwriters!I ain't ‘fraid of no rejectionI ain't ‘fraid of no rejectionLyin' in your bedImagination soarsWho…
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105964
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There are no risks left to take. The notion of solitude hums with happiness. Bees gather particularly good honey and a hurricane stops suddenly, deciding not to embark on its natural terror hunt. And I just keep avoiding the knives, the pills and the…
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102753
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It's not a funeral. Nobody to mourn over.
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132154
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I said, “That bird is hungry.”
The sparrow was eying both of us
At our separate outside café tables
As it hopped around looking for crumbs.
Then it would look up at us
Expectantly.
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130673
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Who ever saw an open upright pop bottle on the street?
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103263
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The Bearcat 101 was a police scanner popular with a certain type during in the 1970s. Daddy was that exact type. I found the Bearcat in his apartment after he passed. His illness was a common one, the process gradual, implacable. No red and blue…
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108954
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121154
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Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone crack open
an Old Bushmill’s and offer John Huston a pull.
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137793
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We hit the road, headed west.
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146583
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At the third or fourth discotheque I drink so much I accidentally find myself happy.
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97544
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This is the hole I fell in. I can sort of crawl out of it now, but I must have fallen fastasleep in there. Does it really matter if it was for a long or a short time? Everyone is suddenly gone like a smile and replaced lately by sadly different versions…
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103163
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She became a murderer
in all the stages of her life
she could not seem to succeed
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136454
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Everyone hoped to be assigned somewhere they could just drop in on their way home for Memorial Day weekend. Someone said, Blake, you’re single. You hate your family, don’t you?
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130274
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"I’ve always wanted to write a novel. Like Catch-22, something off-beat that would start by word-of-mouth, you know, and become an underground classic."
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121974
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(2:56 a.m.): "Hi it's Charlie it's Pat at 4:00 in the morning my time. I just wanna tell you that I wouldn't mind getting him in bed with you the rest of my life."
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127744
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We ask was that me? The one on the corner with his hat tipped to the jaunty side? I've wore hats, I've stood on corners. Am I not jaunty?
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96473
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Ginny, the mother, was a lark in every respect of the word. Born and raised in central California farm country, to a family of lower middle class means, educated in public schools in whose bathroom stalls she was deflowered as unceremoniously as a pig ta
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123563
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You say we will go together to the park and dig a shallow grave and atone for everything we ever did by breathing soil deep into our lungs, and the wolves will leave.
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188253
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I missed the cadence and remembered the verse too late. Now, that place where everything comes together is a first taste of things that have somehow become slightly bitter, and I was choking on it.
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219393
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You’re often photographed at Martha’s Vineyard at sunrise, Key West on New Year’s Day, Coney Island on Christmas, and variously at dive bars in Montauk. You’re a woman of a certain age and you are also a woman of the world. You’re a 21st century
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116144
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The young boy woke to the sound of laughter. He blinked himself out of deep sleep and allowed…
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