2158 5 2
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If I was going to liberate myself from my marriage to Rosie, the first step ought to be to liberate myself from my wedding band. That wasn't going to be easy. Along with the more prominent rolls of fat I'd been accumulating, my ring finger now bulged over the upper…
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1245 5 2
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He spoke the "Why" and it stuck out its tail. He tripped and fell with his face wedged between the W. She kept the answer in her chest so the words wouldn't crowd him where he lay. The "Why" found its way back into his cheeks and puffed his face out like a disease. He…
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1103 3 3
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Life's a beach? A bitch? Same thing.
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1057 6 2
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Standing on the beach, watching the waves crash onto the shore, before the storm. It is easy to understand why dogs like sticking their head out of the car window. Standing on my favorite part of the beach, merely feet from the beach house. The house you weren't…
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1231 2 1
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Robbie Lange closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair. Yawning, he looked out the window into the black night. Another evening at the office, he thought. He counted the other lit windows in the skyscrapers around his building. “Goodnight, everyone
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1284 8 2
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Entering that darkroom is like slipping through the barrel of a rifle.
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723 2 2
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Hygga was on the French news tonight. Hygga is big in France. And Scandinavia, of course. I'd never heard of it. Hygga comes from a Danish word meaning “to give courage, comfort, joy.” It stems from hyggia, which means to think in Old Norse, and is related to…
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1277 6 3
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N-n-never screamscold a cat.
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1196 5 3
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“You’ve put all my anorexic friends on the table nearest the buffet,” I say. “And all my bulimic friends on the other side of the room away from the buffet and the toilets.”
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1012 2 3
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Now, as we sat on lawn chairs /
on the balcony to watch the meteor shower
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1105 3 1
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She seizes my hand. I resist just enough to sense her strength.
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1441 4 3
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"I accept it," Leo said in a low voice. "I accept it all. I know who I am, I know who you are, I might even know who Martin is, now. We all have to share this. I think I will forgive you, because I can'
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239 6 3
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1216 2 2
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We do the work of fixing people like him?
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1245 5 3
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I remember a big Walgreen’s Drug store (maybe in Elmhurst, or Oakbrook Center?) and this shopping expedition we went on. That’s where you bought your first Dust Buster, I believe (or was this another man?) Anyway, you made me carry everything. We didn’t
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1053 3 3
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J., W., and W.’s girlfriend were exploring the nature and mores of homosexual conduct by discussing whether W. would be willing to suck J.’s cock.
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1090 5 2
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As the breeze slowly died, another breeze brought her back up, one breeze after another like the hands of God carrying her through the sky.
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1445 3 2
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He kept the lawn mowed at the perfect height. He mowed it twice a week to one inch. Some weeks he mowed it a third time for good measure.
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721 3 2
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A fractured world we haunt: the streets, the schoolyards- Across the floodlit roads, where we shared drunk adonics: No marbled halls but towers that stole the stars' eyes- Flat-roofed serrations against…
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1381 9 2
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I will die in Paris on a rainy day.
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1265 6 0
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"I was just coming home from work listening to Consumer Dave," said Murrietta resident Mick Baylor, through his attorney, "when my eyelids started getting droopy. And he was just talking about how Circuit City was going out of business and I was. . .well,
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1414 7 3
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My daddy made all these gold records on the walls, died, and left me to run BadSmack Media, even if I could only manage to run it aground.
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1946 5 2
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He stands. Shoes for dashing, and he could dash, if the audience would stand for it, through one of two exits, beneath one of three wreaths. This year, the year of the Millennium, the wreaths seem dark and Germanic. The stage seems like a Great Hall set for a solitary…
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1315 4 3
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It is within my nature, and many others I know, to cling to what’s consistent and certain: the battles fought in the war for survival and the organic camaraderie borne in the trenches. Sometimes the quest and the people we commiserate with along the way
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1425 6 2
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D'ya have to be so rough?
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1340 4 3
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Nancy's brother, Ronnie would wait until church was out and pull the bench up to the piano play and sing show tunes, even humming them loudly if he didn't remember the lyric. Crooning away — as if he had the lead in a Broadway musical. Well, that was part of it,…
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1090 3 3
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I nearly burst out laughing when I heard myself telling him in my accented English that she’d confided in me that she was preparing to sacrifice herself as part of an elaborate snuff film produced by a band of psychotic artists hell-bent on making up for
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1592 5 2
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There was that time he decided to avoid the whole situation by getting off the bus early.
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296 6 0
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“Whatcha doin'?”
“Moving this shit.”
“Why?”
“Well, I can’t leave it here!”
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502 6 2
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hands slide into gloves unseen / eyes disappear behind glass / the crank turns the flywheel spins: / every octave has droppt low / sub-sonic shudders within—
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