1152 7 7
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And a delicacy
in the right regrets.
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943 4 1
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I stood at a workbench for eight hours a day, scraping various shapes and bits of metal fresh from the machinist’s press, plotting my escape.
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2578 4 1
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The questions on the form are tough--the U.S. government isn't going to hand out money to just any old rapper hanging out on a corner. We want fresh 'n nasty stuff.
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792 3 0
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Talk about the Nutcracker–my nuts are cracking from the cold cause it’s freezin’ out here! But a guy’s gotta make a buck, and scalpin’ ballet tickets in sub-zero weather pays the bills.
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815 2 1
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We got a lotta people ruinin' the public transit experience. Talkin' loud on cell phones, clippin' fingernails, even flossing their teeth.
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2800 5 2
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“Skip the obsequies,” he said. He meant “flattery” but he’d been taking a “30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary” course.
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1111 3 1
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This is a very impromptu piece written at two in the morning based on a prompt from Meg Pokrass, who insisted the following words be used: fussyhairybloomingslipperyflutterdamppaleweedsyanking “Maxfuss” was his password, which was appropriate,…
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1483 8 6
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in her monestary mission, with her rosary and candles, time holds me here
my feet got the travelin' blues but my hands tie old women's bones to my hair
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1448 11 4
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Billy had crystal blue eyes A small mouth And long hair to cover up his Hearing aids. He told me once, with his hands How he liked to submerge His head in water and yell So loud he could feel it. "I can hear myself that way," he…
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1142 3 1
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I suppose I'd rather Tomorrow be heroic.
It would make the passing of time less villainous.
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947 0 0
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He was pretty much packed, one large suitcase full, two crates of albums, one duffel bag. He had to leave room for the three riders he would pick up on his way, one in St. Louis, two in Columbia.
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1528 2 0
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I began to imagine the shadows, so rectilinear, were arcing and flowing. I saw shoulders moving, the sinewy upper shoulders of wolves running in a pack. . .
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1063 1 1
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A rose and two dollars. Where did they come from? I didn't know anyone who had visited my parents' grave recently, yet that evening I saw a white rose on my mother's side and two bucks on my father's. I took the money and placed my own flowers with the rose. It had to have…
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1664 19 14
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I'm sitting here listening to Nebraska and it's / breaking my heart
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1382 3 3
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He was a sushi chef, and he would spend hours in their kitchen practicing his knife skills, and the speed with which he can put that there and this in that and so on; and she would see him on the floor most mornings, still wearing that dirty, tattered ban
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1097 0 0
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I have two of those hand exercisers jamming the
tray and keeping it locked in place
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1233 10 3
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It performs the dialectic that intertwines real and ideal through her mounting concern about being choked to death then eaten by a very large pig.
|
1041 6 1
|
removing oneself sometimes occurs only on the page
|
1321 10 5
|
My banker said, "We've millions we can spare,
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1207 1 1
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Angelina Jolie, seducer of Brad Pitt, tattooed mother of rescued orphans, and the unlikely daughter of Jon Voight who broke Billy Bob Thornton's heart, is only two blocks from me, in a travel trailer on Seventh Street, gently rousing herself from sleep.
|
1612 7 1
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As I lean over the chrome rail and look at the floor on the street level of the mall, I ask myself a question. If I was to fall, I wonder if it would be better to land and lie there with my eyes open or closed. Closed, I decide, would make me look like I was at peace, open…
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981 6 6
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Look. There's just you and me, that's all that's left. All the rest of them had already given up a long, long time ago. They dropped their precious, colorful dreams like rusted railroad lanterns, like abandoned pumpkins, and littered the Twitching…
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986 4 2
|
A man walks up and faces
this new red brick wall
The bricks are all perfect
as you might expect in a dream
And the cement is tuck-pointed
without a dribble, anywhere
He looks at the wall
and puts his head through it
And when he pulls h
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1322 1 1
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Roanne hungered. Memory had ruled her forever. Shards really, edged like machetes: daddy, whose fingers had eyes in the dark. Momma, ensconced in the shadows. Inside the church, those pairs of short…
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1106 18 11
|
My poetry is bare, showing its pink and purplish imperfections and its injuries. I buy it a dress to hide its bruises, to ornate it a little, to make it smile. On its rather ugly and mishaped body, the dress looks comical, ridiculous, clumsy, like a bird with a broken wing.…
|
756 0 0
|
Society in all its former glory had been taken back by nature in this place
|
1408 5 3
|
Her time was spent in its usual way, breakfast, pills, organizing and cleaning. It was just hours behind today; hence the late swim. She was proud she did it, that she went outside. She swam, moved herself in the pool, chilly as it was. The pump made a wa
|
1089 2 2
|
This is the record of a drowning.
|
1363 2 1
|
The other night while we stood in the kitchen locked in each other's stone silence, he finally said, “You're waiting for something to get you to the other side of grief. But there's no such thing.”
|
1097 3 0
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The first indication I had of what I look like came when a man put me back on the rack, remarking that I was too pink. Over the weeks that followed, I gained a few more ideas about my appearance from the comments of people in the shop. My photographic side had been…
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