133132
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Your grandmother has gotten old, in that way where one day you wake up, and you realize that someone you've been looking at your whole life suddenly looks different. That hands which used to gently place band-aids on scraped knees are…
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143822
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She hated the noiseless dying sound they made as he stuck the hook through their eyes. She always wanted for them to scream, but they never did. They didn’t even blink.
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128322
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There are worse things than getting your ass kicked by a 12 year old Puerto Rican kid. This was exactly my thinking as he stood over me, his pre-pubescent screams sounding like a baby Bruce Lee, preparing to finish me off.
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237232
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A girl’s legs stirring the air up
behind his back
as he lies between her thighs
stirring the air repetitively
like a sea anemone
stirring the water to feed
the soul, the hunger
between the legs and arms
for new life, stirring up
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123741
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What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True that you won’t let my misinformed intrusion dampen your beginnings.
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118621
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He boasts of administering regular beatings to his wife and claims that she enjoyed it.
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110012
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and like the want
of weather, we walk away or come close
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51031
|
He tilted his head at his monitor and exhaled “No.” Minutes later, he tilted his head the other way and more sharply exclaimed “No!” Then he began over the next quarter hour simply to stare at the data stream before him, which left him speechless.
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136242
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I watched haunted as my pearl tooth circled the rotten porcelain sink. I could feel my hair thinning and my pale skin suddenly felt too loose.
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93011
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103332
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To conceive of them separated was unthinkable to every wet-eyed soul at the burial.
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78022
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His name was Gino. I’ll leave out the last name, not that I think it matters anymore. He came into my dad’s gas station on the near North side of Chicago to have work done on his fancy car. I was still a teenager. I accidentally opened the glove compartme
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102032
|
"May I help you?"
She was beautiful.
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149232
|
Teaching never occurred to me in college. I took workshops and wrote often. Friends and classmates, meanwhile, switched from studio majors to Art Education, or from English to Certification. Not me. Teaching high-schoolers would be all wrong. Briefly, I…
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98632
|
I’m sorry. We couldn’t fix the country
and left her a bigger mess than we found her
Oil leaking from her shores
earthquake batter all over her skin
We couldn’t fix her, and we’re sorry
You’ll find her wreck in tatters
at the bus st
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96022
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The boy in the elevator with round glasses, /
who carried a newly-purchased broom, /
was tall and burdened with clothes
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99540
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Sometimes I think there's an octopus in my stomach. In the mornings it stretches and droops its lazy head to one side — It suctions it's tentacles to the walls of my belly and pulls them together forcing me To gag, and vomit what we didn't digest of the…
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123432
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“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.
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106831
|
Little Roy Farrell'd taken a bite of his fourth grade teacher's ear as she bent close to help him sound out the word “grace.” Doc Felter had sewn most of teacher's ear back on, but by seventh grade Roy still couldn't read and never understood that he'd in
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103821
|
In the living room of a model home, Mr. Jorgensen lived. He was a mannequin. He spent his days in display windows. He spent his commutes displaying the latest model cars.
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107712
|
If it weren't for the different lengths of dock, I would think the river just goes past me. Maybe it does, and the banks move too. Orderly where the clouds are random. I have cormorants, passengers, and salmon. They catch each other. They make my crew money. When did my…
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102031
|
Though his heart aches
his melody seems to flow
It creeps into the dreams
of all in slumber in the valley below
|
87422
|
The space they are in is years long.
|
95512
|
The world is always changing, even if it's in several eras at once.
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129432
|
He asked me if I was going to buy Valentine's for the office this year, and I shook my head. We were in the dollar store, February 13, and I could get a box of twenty kids' Valentines with last year's favourite cartoon…
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113941
|
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66321
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Just an abnormal visit to the post office.
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145042
|
Martin named it “Squishy” for two reasons. The first reason was because it was the noise it made when it came out of the hole in his basement. The second is because it’s what it did to Grandfather...
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1032120
|
Your son is six feet tall in the sixth grade. By his sophomore year of high school, he outweighs you by a hundred pounds. He's been offered four football scholarships and one for a sport he's never played. Every morning his mother, your ex ex-wife, makes his breakfast of a…
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106941
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CALENTURE The horizon is marked with the still sculptures of dead gulls; A young man floats off slowly on the…
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