1154 4 1
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In praise of the colorful flock with crowns
of teased cotton candy rising high above
Modular walls, stalled operating systems
staling coffee and pale corner offices
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1523 4 4
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It’s nice, but, it’s weird not being in love, or maybe in love, sometimes in love.
(Or, not in love. Frankly, we might be not in love.)
Or, both of us might be. Or, only one of us might be.
(Good lord, I hope it’s never me.)
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1013 4 3
|
A novel is an idea that has
Survived many severe beatings
While a poem is a homely thing that was
Never even asked to the dance
Art Speak, however, is the art of
Systematically overstating and
Re-inventing the Obvious to the point of
Distr
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3566 4 3
|
What’s it like, sex? I ask her.
You see that picture? she asks, nodding to the large canvas covered with a film of dust propped up against her bedroom wall. That picture’s the only thing she never sold. She hocked it a few times but always got the
|
1479 4 2
|
Take shelter from the rain inside the Museum of Sex.
|
1064 4 0
|
The news just now that you are dead
|
1211 4 4
|
Ok, ok, people are forever asking me, so why did I cross the frickin’ road? Dumb-shit me, of course. Consequences waaay unforseen.
|
1414 4 1
|
@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } …
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1219 4 2
|
A walled city doesn’t let you out any more easily that it has let you in earlier.
|
1257 4 2
|
Before I grew used to it
I would wake to the sound
of the Amtrak whistle
echoing down along the tracks
behind our trailer park
and wonder who was hurtling where
through the dark night and across
this wide Illinois prairie
|
1060 4 4
|
I will always remember that
picture of you in your
bright blue summer dress,
with your arms spread out
against a wooden fence in
Central Park.
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958 4 4
|
Don’t shout. Be nice
Cheer up. Sit up
Straight. Don’t play
With your food. Elbows
Off the table. Watch
Your language. Use
Your napkin. Eat the
Crust
Stop fidgeting
Stop scratching
Close your mouth
When you chew
Remember to
Clea
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2971 4 3
|
They were all in love with tortured musicians, 22-year-old geniuses who hanged themselves after making one perfect album. The musicians generally lived in England. It was safer that way.
|
1137 4 2
|
By lunch:
The dryer is an F-5 dervish of mismatched socks, blue jeans and your yellowing college T's, lovingly held onto. For a moment there is a comforting warmth and softness to their smell. In the debris strewn landscape of the living room a carcass
|
1296 4 4
|
On a street-lit night in Jeddah.
|
1449 4 3
|
Nancy's brother, Ronnie would wait until church was out and pull the bench up to the piano play and sing show tunes, even humming them loudly if he didn't remember the lyric. Crooning away — as if he had the lead in a Broadway musical. Well, that was part of it,…
|
768 4 0
|
It has been more than three decades since I returned to work from a noon union meeting to find myself, along with about twenty others, locked out of the printing plant where we worked.
|
1418 4 1
|
The little girl spooned strawberry yogurt into her mouth as a pleasant morning breeze swept across the balcony of the hotel. The girl lifted the cup and stuck her tongue inside to lick the yogurt off the edges. Across the small round table, the girl's mother sat…
|
1617 4 1
|
Refuse to go to the church service, even though you already missed the funeral. Tell his mother something came up. Call his phone over and over, just to hear his voice, until his mother asks you to stop. Make a recording of his voicemail. Delete it an
|
1331 4 2
|
True facts about Redbeard the communist pirate.
|
927 4 3
|
Jimi, Jim, and Janis
Kurt and Amy too
They died and gone to heaven
And fit inside a shoe
Room 114’s where they lie
Their eyes wide open
|
1272 4 4
|
The last chick in the nest
|
973 4 4
|
|
1343 4 3
|
I'd never seen a dead person before, let alone one that was living just
seconds earlier.
|
1856 4 3
|
She'd make a great catch in the rain. Because in the rain nothing moves. No cat girl of deep shade eyeliner. No saint of dark corners.
|
1871 4 1
|
"Make a wish," she whispered.
|
1363 4 3
|
There was a body in the backseat, and they drove through the highways at night to a late night radio show that played 80’s power ballads. He said: “I am really glad you’re here for me.”
|
633 4 2
|
"Polio?" people wondered. They asked: "Is that contagious?" Nobody knew. It was 1953. The epidemic raged on. Children in some towns were being made to stay indoors during the polio season for fear that the disease was airborne. It was putting an unnatura
|
1442 4 1
|
When I bite into a York Peppermint Pattie, I get the sensation of being curled in a ball inside a cold, dark cave filled with my darkest, most paralyzing fears.
|
892 4 0
|
Once we got to my house, Lynda had everything drinkable in the house open and in everybody's hands before I knew it. She tossed down a bottle of my father's beer, then started on a bottle of whiskey that was open. She took a straight mouthful and offe
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