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The abstracted man lacks an inside. He is a body. A shell. An exterior that encompasses nothing.The abstracted man yearns to fill himself with adjectives. He lumbers through streets. No adjectives fit. He finds adjectives where we discard them. He carries them in his…
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171420
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The plan was this: We would take our first vacation. My husband and I would take our 2 ½-year-old son Ethan and 13-month-old son Jonas to Mystic, Connecticut, a 90 minute drive from our home outside of Boston. We would stay at the Hilton, which was right near the Aquarium,…
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79220
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Suddenly a Shakespearean sonnet, …
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123411
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I laughed hysterically at Austin Powers.
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123530
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She’d picked him up at a party freshman year, calling him Danny. Until then he had always been Daniel. He’d said nothing and his name was changed.
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172920
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His mother was not an aw-come-here-honey-and-give-me-a-hug type mom. She was the kind of mother who, if you had some kind of problem, would suggest that perhaps it might be a good idea to volunteer (she was really big on volunteering) at some sort of orga
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168840
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Ann finally got her eyes to focus, and there he was, her husband, looking better and happier than she'd seen him in ages, with the same Bombshell she'd seen him with earlier (So it was him). His hand was on the small of her back and he was talking and she
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139411
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It was two days to town. His horse could only go one.
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175620
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Before Plasma screen TV Futon Underwear (brief style) piled on kitchen chair Unopened mail from funeral parlour Water in the sink coloured orange with grease Desktop computer (flying toasters screen saver) Cigarette butts floating…
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157711
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I am in the hallway, but I don’t sense it. That is to say: I don’t feel my body. I am like a phantom, a limbless entity floating, flailing.
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158840
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Children, afraid of dogs cried. There was uproar of melee. Children strained at their leashes to get away.
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143630
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I see ghosts. They accost me in their sleep. Hundreds of them. When I wake up (after a long night of half-waking), I think, What wold ghosts want with me? I have nothing for them. But at night they're there again, watching, tapping my shoulder as I lay awake. Sometime…
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129540
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Koo ate the sad, bitter pills just so she wouldn’t have to try and make small talk about La Donna’s deformed, retarded kid.
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4610
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Peter had recently cracked his tooth chewing ice. It was the top left molar, not the far back one, but the one just in front of that. His dental insurance covered most of the extraction but none of the implant. An artificial tooth was considered cosmetic, and they…
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132420
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Ruth carries always a small bottle of nitroglycerin; and tissues, wads of tissues; two Tums (for calcium, she tells me)...
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119410
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You are my intergalactic princess / The most beautiful in twelve systems
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157111
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No, I’m not at the junior high bus stop. I’m at the dining room table with my parents.
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207420
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Well, I turn the car off, the song turns off, I gather all of my stuff, turn off my lights, inevitably drop something as I’m getting out of the car, shut the door, lock the car, fumble for my house key, walk up the stairs, unlock the front door, set my
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168301
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They drifted for months, locked between the vast merciless blue and the withering sun. Their faces blistered and their minds bleached and weary. They conspired in the shadows, drew plans in the sawdust, they grew confident and…
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139311
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101140
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Why is this woman smiling?
Because she’s the Real Mona Lisa,
that’s why
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115720
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As we follow the trail and things snap beneath our feet, I tell myself that the snapped things take pleasure, find purpose even, in the sounds they make with my soles.
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102320
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feathered flightless freak of nature
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174830
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Just because I’m suicidal doesn’t mean I don’t care about whacking my head on some service railing ten stories down. The fact that I’m going to jump doesn’t lessen my fear of propellers or a broken back.
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72940
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The dead turkey’s wife, or lover
Watching over his recent roadkilled carcass
Seeming to be mourning her loss
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113730
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Walking east, he pauses,
Picks a cassava,
Cleaves the melon in two;
He tears juicy chunks
Of flesh to cleanse the blade.
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98511
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Like Smart’s cat Jeoffrey,
he’s a mixture of gravity and waggery.
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114720
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Emma held her arm up to John’s eyes. He looked, nodded. “My burns are on the inside,” he told her. “I’ll never show you.”
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157430
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His mouth went dry, but he managed to say, coolly, “Just how would you like me to do that, Sandra?”
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129910
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It is your music that makes me want to crack open my ribcage and rip out my heart as it still beats, to cauterize my carotids, and shove the mechanical insides of a clock into my thoracic cavity.
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