2022 5 2
|
He stands. Shoes for dashing, and he could dash, if the audience would stand for it, through one of two exits, beneath one of three wreaths. This year, the year of the Millennium, the wreaths seem dark and Germanic. The stage seems like a Great Hall set for a solitary…
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1885 5 3
|
So she leans over the patio table like that model in that magazine ad and then takes a sip of her blended coffee drink as if a director had said to pretend the straw is a penis. As if this director only just shouted, “And you're a dirty, dirty girl, and
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1101 5 6
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Oh it's another one of those strange thrill rides slowly building from a buzz saw whisperinto cool morning's consciousness, coming on and crawling through the moon's mattress like a silver stream and under the dented pillow where…
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1175 5 3
|
"All these people," Rammstein complained, "seems all they wanna do is write about love, and sex along with it, you know? And I think it's because it's all feelgood shit; you know, your sweet baby loves you, and he or she's hot as Angie or Brad, and…
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1212 5 3
|
The mother, a pony-tailed beauty, thinks she looks fat in her
new blue-checked pedal pushers and white blouse tied
under her full breasts— in the latest style.
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1158 5 4
|
So, my wife got fired from her job for being three minutes late five times. But he had it in for her, the fatty boss. He was lazy and she was smart, in line for his job. And she had a workman's comp case against the hospital—she'd slipped in pudding in the cafeteria…
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1558 5 5
|
His people eat soggy casseroles and smile with tight lips.
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1565 5 3
|
Our mothers died in childbirth. Taken in by the village, our new mothers taught us to wave at the river boats, to sell our trinkets to tourists. They offered us coins of a foreign currency and little pathetic smiles. By nightfall, our fingers bled. Then came…
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1321 5 4
|
But I don't see the cabinets, or know how to put the 4 chapters he's talking about today into the drawers that are invisible, floating, above his bed he's been in for a year, me sitting next to him, becoming a spinster.
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1715 5 3
|
When farming started in September, I thought of gambling, of my childhood best friend’s marriage ruined due to gambling, and of farming as a trope for living in the Midwest.
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2844 5 7
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I was born to be desired, stamped with the insignia of my creator, and folded in precious, shimmering materials. If the fate of my co-createds holds true for me, then this covering was further covered with the name of my creator, printed on materials too rough ever to touch…
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1767 5 5
|
He moved his rotten breath closer to my mouth, like he wanted to twirl his tongue around just to see how it felt.
|
1255 5 4
|
Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone crack open
an Old Bushmill’s and offer John Huston a pull.
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1243 5 5
|
She thinks this is the place she dreamed
|
1170 5 3
|
while the fat stars stand out in the cobalt night.
|
1138 5 2
|
The Bunny Hop represented that riot-like atmosphere–in cuddly guise–described by Claude Levi-Strauss in his seminal essay that I have forgotten the name of it’s so important.
|
1252 5 3
|
"... each of them stuck in one finger to sample the goods. Just then Katie felt a breeze on her bare legs. Her skirt literally moving."
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1149 5 3
|
Could even drift off to
New Orleans for a slow sip
of a hurricane
|
1136 5 5
|
Then I am in Washington DC impersonating an accountant.
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1136 5 5
|
Years later Polyphemus still remembers the wine-soaked taste of Odysseus’s men. The barley and garlic-flavored Greeks. Their flesh a fibrous, blood-hued hummus. Their crunched bones releasing sweet marrow.
|
1429 5 2
|
Elvis awoke in a cold, dank sweat, hungover from bourbon and bad dreams.
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1746 5 4
|
The apartment was a second-level place, so I went down the steps and looked through the stained glass window of the door. “Ah hell,” I said to myself. Raymond Carver and John Fante and Charles Bukowski were outside. I opened the door.
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1116 5 3
|
An electromagnetic pulse/
scrubbed the servers./
The clouds wisped and blew away, empty./
Markets lost what little mind they had.
|
1137 5 4
|
When we were young and small we played in the orchard. Mom made apple pies and fried apples, caramel apples and apple sauce, apple cider. Grandma’s apple butter recipe.
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1874 5 0
|
once wedding cake
under pillows.
now fluffy frosting
on squashed defeat
|
1515 5 3
|
He never bothered converting the tip money he pocketed at the Imperial Street 24 hour car wash as his world was replete with 25 cent transactions, making quarters the perfect coin for his realm.
|
1239 5 4
|
when i was five or six/ we lived in an apartment/ and every sunday/ i'd lie on the carpet/ to watch squares of sunshine/ crawl across the rug/ while my mother inflicted upon us/ a centuries-long hour of television/ worse than any droning mass.
|
1238 5 2
|
“Please excuse the form letter, but due to the volume of god-awful submissions that we receive, we do not have the time to crush the spirit of each writer personally.”
|
1357 5 0
|
She said “I have to go”, he answered with his eyes “Don't” and they stepped closer to each other in the kitchen, a step on the tiled floor, the remnants of their tea cold on the counter top.
|
1581 5 0
|
Besides, that might have been the area of his birth, and if so, Jacob was now the director, priest, pallbearer, driver, and custodian of a hometown funeral
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