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They say I'm supposed to see everything as a nail, but I have a silver head. Too soft for bang-bang. Too soft for anything but sitting on a shelf. I sat in her classroom for twenty-five years. She was proud of me and pointed often to the words inscribed on me that I can't…
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120410
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As soon as a complication emerges, the obvious choice is to move to another line. But I don't. I can't.
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181311
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I am in the hallway, but I don’t sense it. That is to say: I don’t feel my body. I am like a phantom, a limbless entity floating, flailing.
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91511
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Barred from hotel bars and restaurants because you drank too much,
you won the prizes but seemed to disdain the people who gave them.
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77011
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not otherwise employed, writing verse,/
line by tenuous line the substance of pulse./
―but no one collects unemployed verse:/
self-lacerations must yield blood, not ink.
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122310
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Before they ever spoke, Linda and Meg had sat next to each other in the cramped lecture hall for three weeks, their thighs touching, while Dr. Laurens showed slides of ancient Japanese art. Meg's eyes never left the screen, but Linda glanced at her as often as she…
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151411
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Who hasn't got a scar...some flesh wound of memory.
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186110
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As Gino exited the supermarket, plastics bags in tow, he began doing curls with his right arm. He’d been doing this for years, reasoning that he might as well get some exercise during the walk home.
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209811
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"Geez," I thought, "not only is this daredevil felon fellow my EXACT height and build — his co-conspiring gal-pal must be, too!" I exhaled what felt like a gallon’s worth of air though my nose. "This is just getting too fucking weird ..."
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137711
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Damn, the light turned
green
on me.
Wasn't ready.
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198011
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In sleep their bodies drift between the sheets until they find each other.
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200312
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She can tell you seven things she doesn’t love about her face.
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118710
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. . . lightening for their jars
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141710
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Not really a story but a look at how we live
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165211
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Once upon a time in the days of old
There lived a poor tailor who- I am told-
Did brag that his daughter
Spun straw into gold!
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139711
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Charley carried the corpse over to the dinghy and tossed it into the pool of rain water collected inside. The headless snake swerved through the water, oblivious to its fate, powered perhaps by exposed nerves and muscle memory.
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187413
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I imagined you going at her in ferocious fucking-- /
O, O, O, O, O, O, O Immortal Glistening Cock,
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148210
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On Friday evenings they play Scrabble, a whole crowd of them. They use books to keep score, page numbers, instead of a long column of pencil scratches. They organize themselves into teams; the English majors all together, versus biology, history and horn players. She and he…
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270511
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A cat terrorizes a small family. They fight back.
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139611
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Reports have been spreading fast
that an actual living poet
has been found right outside the
borders of Berkeley
Rumors grew into a wildfire of speculation
Saturday night when one of them
a tall graying older specimen
more or less in the
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114710
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“You got a cigarette, man?” “Hey, mister, you got a cigarette?” “You got a cigarette, mister?” “Hey, mister, you listening to me? You got any spare change?” The voice was coming from the…
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159112
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[SOME PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS.]
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140410
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HE DREAMED THAT NIGHT OF A SMALL BLACK CHILD LYING INJURED IN THE STREET, UNABLE TO CRY OUT
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129511
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I had put the child's wagon, which had been red once, back together again. “Honey”, I said, “I found out the garbagemen will pick up concrete this month.” So, I put…
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116811
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128311
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135910
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At six a.m. he was awakened by the alarm on the watch, and found he could not remove it from his wrist, though he was able to turn it off. Of course, she was gone, but had left a little patchouli-scented note on a pillow.
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163310
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At last one of the men on the line bowed his head in a silent prayer for deliverance from what was about to come, then lifted his head and shouted loudly for his fellows to charge.
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131211
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On this day, a blinding sky
holds ribbed reams of clouds,
staccato against staggering blue.
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127911
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my soul is black and it's deep like heartbreak and heavy as stone and as thick as ink and it is pressing on top of me like last nights one night stand like dead weight so that I can't lift my arms or spread my legs it feels like I am walking through mud but it's…
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