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“They picked me up in their spaceship about noon,” Austin Grantham says to me while pulling up an apple crate to use as a stool.
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57621
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The line of the unemployed
wrapped back on itself
like an accordion pleat
and extended all the way across
a great hall
You could see the faces
of them, bluish and drawn
under the dim florescent
lighting
First in
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129311
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The pear is a bruise. Feels like desperation in the light, it looks soft and blue. She wants to touch it and doesn’t want to. How the blood gathers under the blue and the body grows tender. Swells. Slowly.
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89111
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Years later, the couple is different in some terribly profound way. Maybe they have grown old and begun to look like one another. Or maybe they have been divorced and haven't spoken in months or years except through the kids, who they spoil and use against their…
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103750
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An expanse of trees, grass, scrub, heathers, sky, space. A grey horse, the type her gran would have placed a bet on, approaches. "Don't like flies?" he asks. He holds her gaze, walks closer. Seventeen black flies crawl over the right side of his head. "What…
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94131
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“Don’t do this Jack. You are better than this.” He pleaded. My lips curled, “Maybe I am, but you’re not.” I spat. I lifted up his delicate frame and threw him back against the wall of his office. I watched as his head bounced off the decorative brick
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100811
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He licks his lips and mouths the air, salivating, unashamed of his propensity for the round, pink grapefruit, the almost egg-shaped oranges, the firm, juicy tangerines.
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102811
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They run nonstop for weeks. Between traffic stalled cars. Down forgotten subways tunnels drilled long ago in the cold earth. Past burning sugarcane fields.
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133612
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And I just want to say that my morning song is better than yours. I want you to hear it buzzing in me like an old radiator. I want you to do what you’ve done before. To press your ear against the skin and listen for the static.
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139311
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Ham
If you have never cooked a ham steak, you need not be afraid. The ham is often cut so thin that to over or undercook it is nearly impossible. The exterior reflects the centre better than any other meat; you will know when to stop.
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176811
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“I killed a man.”
“Whaaattt???” I'd been meditating on the sun. I figured he was trying to jolt me awake.
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114111
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When I was six, my father brought home a fishbowl. Look out for the inhabitants, he said. You can play Neptune in their microcosm of the sea.
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113321
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The poet paused
Pen poised in hand
A wrinkle on his brow
He’d but to rhyme the final verse
The only problem
How?
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116221
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She also castrated her cat. All by herself...with her Swiss Army Knife. And not with the blade either.
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72321
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He cut the heads off, and in doing this, their eyes came off. He placed the four discs on the windowsill next to the petrified avocado pit and Chia Pet clay shell. The eyes glittered like globs of jam.
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118011
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Route 346 is the way Pop drove to Troy long after everybody else took Route 2. Today Charlie and I drive in the opposite direction. Back then, Pop drove us to Troy on Route 346 on Sunday afternoons with the car windows…
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146611
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I hear the car door slam. Steve, about to duck daddy-duty: Just gonna take a run to the Quickway. "Rudy," I say, "go get in the car. Tell Papo I said Wait."
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177621
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When he turned to the quiet sound of her voice, he knew he'd heard her before, that she had already called out several times, and that she'd reached him somewhere in a recess of…
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51770
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Back in college I had carnal knowledge
of a woman who danced bare-breasted
and frenzied as a Bacchante.
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120540
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Lifting a pear wedge to my lips, I hesitate and dip it into my bourbon instead. I notice a tiny sphere of liquid, suspended, glistening with the flame of the candle. The sweet, subtle scent tantalizes my senses. Careless, sticky fingers bring movement.…
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213111
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One Overcoat, grey striped; One Suit, fur trimmed, red velvet; One Evening gown and jacket, cretonne; One Negligee brocade; One Costume evening gown; Seven Straw hats; Four Shirts for riding habits; Four Collars for riding habits; One Negligee, green crep
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133611
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Before the bills, before the fighting, before the need to blame something, there was a moment blown empty in the span of one doctor’s breath, a moment where bar nights and weekend benders had no meaning, a moment where the future was as blank as the bac
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184721
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“We should go again,” said Krishna.
But Iqbal didn’t reply. He sipped his tea like he hadn’t heard, but a tremor passed through his right shoulder. His left arm was bandaged, and the wrist and lower arm were in a c
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74311
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The tuna fish sandwiches were laid out the way they had always been; they were cut into triangles, with wet paper towels between them. They stayed that way over an hour, untouched, aside from a dimple the size of my cousins finger to test the softness. …
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116540
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The way each intersection in a city where you’ve lived a while becomes layered with personal archeology.
The cafe that replaced a liquor store you avoided, and the friend (or lover) you broke up with there,
and the way on the day of the big fire you
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145111
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I started the fire. I started the fire in my room. I started the fire in my room because I was cold. I figured something small, in an old oil drum I kept in there, and no one would get hurt.
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111212
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May 1890 Rifle, COLORADO Only pressure can change one thing into another. In terms of time, the…
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92530
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There were more of us before, laying in a puddle cuddling on the floor with heads tucked into the crooks of arms where light scattered their crowns in the morning and no machine exists for me to use trying to find that morning again. Carl could go off the side of the…
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96511
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Love needs loathing like cold weather needs warm clothing. And all truths, untruths and part truths need a place to live when a mind gets too sardine-packed with information and cynicism...
Some say there was a time when the light was brighter, the ear
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92040
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We construct what we want, from what has failed in the past. We thought this worked. The picture was buzzing for me and I tried to hold on. I went blindly forward.
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