1381 11 4
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The flash of love was real, the life within her was real, and the main thing now was to climb.
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1428118
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I was sleeping the night of a hurricane party. I awoke to lightning flashes. They lit the undersides of descending clouds, and lit the shadows of scattering dancers. The hurricane must have turned inland.
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1641117
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The world knows how to make you smile. I'm certain, but it's your own unique grin that they want for themselves. It's always been their perfect prize to horde. The trouble of course comes from wanting something that only exists in…
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553116
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Let’s start with the end—death. Upbeat, huh?
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1835113
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The impression old Updike left on a young mind.
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11211110
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1696115
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A nun once told me to watch my tongue. This is not an easy thing to do.
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1615115
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This weekend was supposed to be about intellect and soul-mating, but, like all others, it's turned into body and longing. You sit in my passenger seat and I let you smoke in my wee car with the windows rolled down. We've come from a wedding, a fairy ring, a…
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5137113
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The man meets a woman while out on his lunch break. She seems nice; they strike up a conversation. Before leaving, the woman gives the man her telephone number. The man goes home and thinks about it.
It’s been a long time since he’s been on a date.
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3140116
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Minerva one night had a change of plans, for Mr. Wright knocked on her door in the form of a potbellied perv with a Vaseline mustache.
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1782117
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My dad at the wheel, my mother's ulcer inflamed, she puked her way across northern Alabama that summer, from Huntsville and the rusting rockets to Tuscumbia, the farthest any of us had been west. We drove through raw, blistered towns,…
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Everything is illuminated. If anyone is watching, we look happy.
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She stood with her sisters, pretty maids in a row, felt cold despite the scorching spring sun. Heard what the man said but didn’t register; words from the Lord flew around her like the flighty trill of the robins up above. The birds made more sense.
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Garage-sale variety olive-green corduroy, elbow patches, hems too short. His jacket pocket produced answers one afternoon like strips of paper from cracked fortune cookies.
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He asked me to bury him in Vegas.
Instead, I had him cremated in Trenton.
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2084119
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Dude -- I DON'T want to date your boat!
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1351118
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The gaunt broken man walked with short quick steps on the uneven path.
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Follow my finger up the canyon wall, past the Chevy wedged into its own ferocious orbit. It was that innocent...
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1026119
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With green and silent industry, the plants/
convert our shit to fiber, food and breath.
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The Americans don't want us. They want knowledge. They want to eat with us. They want technology and weapons. They want the results of research they themselves are too craven to perform, answers to questions they ask themselves in whispers, in the dark. T
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16531110
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i never much liked Elvis
never did then never do now
he was no Kris Kristofferson
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Listening is loving.
What is more erotic than
these fathoms, skeins, words,
roping tight the ardent ear.
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14791111
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Vera Wang I saw you on Oprah today girl. Oh no no no.
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“This is not turning out to be a wholesome project,” my brother hissed into the phone one night.
“Yo, Alan, it’s ELVIS. It’s American gothic, and the child needs to know the underbelly of the myth,” I hissed back.“Did you, or did you not, wear makeup to
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Almost every weekend I'd ask Henry to go out with me and Marge, telling him we could double and, hey, maybe he could bring Ellen, who he dated a while back, who still asked about him. I'd suggest such things as going to a movie or out for a few drinks to reminisce about our…
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Cherry was America's least favorite pie. Her mother made it every year for her father's birthday because "daddy doesn't like cake." America had to wash the bowls, the wooden spoon, the plates and finally the Pyrex dish. Her brother got to "contribute" by climbing the tree…
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He flipped through a book of poems Ani’d given me. Nothing fell out so he tore it in two. I said his mama must notta read to this one and one of the older cops laughed and he hit me.
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I didn't believe in hiding secrets or broken arrows. So I told my new girlfriend, who in earnest, tried shedding pounds like ugly memories, who glued herself to my shag carpet, watching exerise videos--that I didn't sleep alone. I tried to be as sensitive as possible,…
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I spent our years together
being someone you'd approve,
and all
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