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I liked E first because she knew all the words to "Alice's Restaurant." Everybody knows "American Pie," but "Alice's," that's impressive. We used to cut class in high school and drive around listening to it, and I'd try to pretend I knew the words, but I never did, so…
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Uncles. Cousins. Enos. No matter how loosely a net is woven, eventually the strands come together again.
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a store called ROCKING FROCKS. In its window was a black tee shirt that said in big white letters, I'M NOT A SLUT, I'M WITH THE BAND.
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She’s not settling. She can learn to like this.
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I leave you because
you violently told me to,
I still love you because
I told you I always would.
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Even before I tap on the door I know I am being watched with one eye. My footsteps have surely given me away. A swift tug on it reveals her to me—half of her, that is, and I slink past the threshold, to her. From her eyes I see that she has…
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Ellie's got two parrots. She owns the house down the block to the left where the golf club owner fixes her grounds and garage because he can't stop working on his vacation. …
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I laughed maniacally in my head at the thought, but I kept picking at it all the same, the bunnies had plans for us.
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289010
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Was it hope or despair that drove her to walk out the door of the place she had called home for the past twenty years? Did she feel sorrow or relief to leave behind a husband and five children?
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And the only time the TI-83 sees the light of day is when I'm rectifying my debit card purchases at such places as Kmart, Office Depot, Walmart, and Office Max, to make sure everything comes out even and good and perfect, a skill never learned in Trysics,
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They got out wearing their crisp brown Army jackets and khaki pants; she saw the cross on the lapel of the officer's shirt and just knew. These men brought sad news from faraway places.
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The parrots woke Eddie up. That and Rocker snoring in the twin bed. A thousand parrots flying over the motel? They squawked, God how they…
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When I was nine years old, I fell through the rotting
boards that covered my grandmother's cesspool and nearly
drowned.
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Beyond the parrots and the palms, she can see an airplane resting in the canyon below, belly up, wings like outstretched arms, the occupants inside presumably rotting in their seats.
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"I read a cute animal story yesterday," I tell them. "And I was filled with rage. I can't live like this. There must be no more bears, or hamster-bears, or manatees, being hopeless and depressed. There must be no more cute animal stories—ever."
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“Hey, come on and sit down,” Jake motioned to her.
It was three in the morning and after way too many gins the last thing Melisa wanted to do on New Year’s Eve was to chat with her ex-boyfriend. In fact if she had known he was goin
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A boy sits in a room filled with old, broken toys. A mother is in the next room reading Cosmopolitan, dreaming of a life that should have been hers. There is the zoo and an unnecessary stroller on a very humid day, beads of sweat dripping slowly down a face. A trip to the…
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They say nothing, but instead watch the birds and people hovering. Every day is an echo of the one before, and the weight of waiting has begun to show itself in the stature of the tiny man and his little old wife. …
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What else, H, is there to say about heartbreak? What else could it be but our hands, cupped as if holding water against our chests, then broken into halves. Or the picture of this one, pretending to load a gun. Or this one, soaked in smoke—asking for
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So lie there like a sodden Brussel Sprout. Leave your paramour to thrash about in vain.
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Lu peeked at his cards again. They were still jacks, and they still looked mighty nice.
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A surreal conversation in a library hints at something else.
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Mark looked at the barrel. Will had filled it to within inches of the top, and that meant the water was cold enough to take away breath, cold enough to make lips turn blue. Even if it had sat all day in the sun, the bottom would be cold, but now, after
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My best friend Khaled’s idea was, he’d set up a pool tournament. Nine-ball. Each church would send a player, and whichever church won, he’d join. Any church that wouldn’t shoot pool, he wouldn’t want to join.
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191421
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Enter Tipitina’s – the rotation hole
where electric, shoeless uncles
allocate their copper goulashes
to catch white dripwater.
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One day when they were sitting on the curb together at 4th Street and Mendocino Avenue in Santa Rosa and Joe was calling out to passers by in a singsong voice, “Spare change for cigs,” she had persuaded them that they should try to join the circus.
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There are problems we lovingly fashion . . .
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The rocket shone in the distance. Cape Canaveral had never looked so pretty.
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Me and the wife are tucked away in our little house.
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I am skinniest in the morning. My belly forgets the previous day’s sins, and I wake up looking taut like a model. Then it starts.
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