65 2 2
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“I used to believe in civilization, but now I know better,” Fritz says. We are both standing on ladders, arms stretched up to the ceiling, putting up fresh panels in his flooded basement. My job is to hold a piece of sheetrock against the rafters while he drills…
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6923
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I slept through my first hurricane. Frederic struck late at night, and I was barely five years old and worn out from a long day of trailing my parents as they prepared for the storm--“battening down the hatches,” as they called it.By the time we bedded down in the hallway,…
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26092212
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When I was sixteen, my dad’s new wife and her daughter, Mary Ann, moved in, so I had to get out. I found a burned-out one story place on Corey Road near the gas plant. When it wasn’t raining, you could see right up through the roof to the stars.
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2510
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Anola was thirteen, betrothed to another in her tribe, and desperate to find a way out. She had no use for Otenga. He was really no worse than any of the other fifteen-year-old Biloxi warriors, but ...
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56700
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and now I'm buzzing / through the muggy air / behind fireflies and night /bugs, whipping my gauze / wings in a blur of minimal / intention..
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13833
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I slept through my first hurricane.
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148321
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“Jus’ because a story told right don’t make it true,” he said. “Sometimes the story is there ain’t no story. Sometimes you look way down inside, and ain’t nuthin’ there. Can’t write no book ‘bout nuthin’. Won’t sell none. But them
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113141
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"Now, here daddy was on the back porch at night talking with some man about leaving."
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107632
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They looked like girl’s jeans. Matt held them against himself in the mirror. Not that girl’s jeans were a mark against them. Usually, girls had better jeans anyway. Matt took two of the biggest pairs out of the big chest in his grandmother’s back closet.
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99100
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Won't speak a word against 'em. Car trunk stunk like bad chicken long after, but I won't speak a word against 'em.
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112400
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I met Barry Hannah once in my life. I’d come to Oxford, MS, to meet an entirely different writer whom I thought then and think now very highly of. I’d also come to escape from another slew of regrets. Oxford is a great city to run away to.
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140073
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“There are no inhibitions in here,” the postman shouted, gesturing at the dance floor with his Marlboro Light, the glowing tip aimed at a woman in a taut skirt. Leaning far forward, her hands nearly touching the plywood floor, she planted her feet and beg
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26322415
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My life is life in shape alone./
The substance leaks away like blood/
removed by the embalmer’s art.
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90100
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Lula’s fried chicken should be served on the hem of Jesus’s robe rather than out of a styrofoam box. It’s so good that I kept glancing at the little tray on the steam table, hoping to be hungry again, ready to yank pieces out of the grasp of strangers, to
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99852
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They build them high they do in Waveland, Mississippi.The tall houses with their skinny thighs spread wide flirting with the dusky coast, like antebellum ladies petticoats lifted, stockings wetted, ankles bared, savingtheir hems from the unpredictable tide,…
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