1960 2 1
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The Bike Messenger on Lexington Avenue
Comes to rest
taking a moment
in the falling rain
slowly massaging the
veins at the top
of his bald head
Cracking his neck
while the yellow cabs start
honking behind him
Unwilling to mov
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1960 5 5
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Called in sick at work for a week straight when I first met Tony.
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1960 21 12
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Fear in a Handful of Dust
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1959 9 6
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I’m maybe only four. Not smoking cigarettes found in street gutters yet. That will come the next year, when I’m five. Maybe when I’m six, and Andy’s five, my pal from across the street. That’s my tricycle parked behind this pack of kids that look to be ne
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1959 13 11
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I am constricted by rings. The weight of self crushes me.
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1959 40 24
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What used to be a scene has broken into fragments and blips of her on a screen I can’t control or manipulate.
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1959 2 1
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Six thousand dollars was a small price for a man's life. Mario was in the back seat of the Honda with Johnny next to him handcuffed, all tense. Francisco had it on a rap station, the sort of music that gave Mario a headache.
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1959 10 1
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I wonder, God. Do you sit around and play with the universe like it was your Wii? Or your Farmville? Or maybe your little iphone app? I mean, really. Did it ever occur to you that the little men, women and children on your screen actually bleed? Do you think…
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1959 0 0
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Bo ruled the city by suggesting new scent formulas in a booming croak of a voice that shook the earth for acres around, yet as a result everybody on the block smelled like fairy breath. Or, on his BAD BREATH DAYS all of the people reeked of rotted sushi f
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1959 4 2
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The dogs shit on the roof and then, every two weeks or so, the man in Apartment 311 climbs out the window with a plastic shovel and scoops the shit into a white plastic bag, which soon grows heavy with dung, dangling from his black-gloved wrist.
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1958 3 3
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IN BOX 12 OF DD FORM 214, the Department of Defense requires a narrative reason for every military discharge. Mine reads: Continued involvement of a discreditable nature with civilian and military authorities.
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1958 8 5
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What kind of person would she be remembered as if she died over night and someone looked in her freezer? She took out a package of bacon from the freezer that was dated 2009.
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1958 2 2
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Janice’s jaw dropped when I told her how much we could get for it. “Enough to never work again and get a nice new pair of these,” I said, squeezing her tits.
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1958 14 9
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It would be another difference a building has from a “sculpture”. It would be something that even photographers would have difficulty in disguising, since many modern buildings, even many modern photographs of buildings, place such emphasis on symmetry. For both…
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1957 31 14
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The image was startlingly unfamiliar. Looking at it, no one would guess it had been their last attempt, their last failure. No one would believe that they had never really been that way, or that the life they shared was built on mind games, manipulation a
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1957 0 0
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Even the stinging warmth of the Grey Goose wasn’t fun without Lisa whispering into his ear, telling him stupid little confessions that he would recite to her in singsong the day after. And she would beat her small fists against his chest solemnly with a
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1957 5 2
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She jumped into the hole the other day. The hole that sucks little girls into the universe, and doesn't return them. I had to watch it. I had to watch her sitting on the dock. Lean over, and fall in. I couldn't have saved her. Nor God. Or Jesus. Not the bridge. …
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1957 12 11
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Maybe, after years of writing poems like letters, he began to notice that no one ever wrote him back.
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1957 4 2
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If you’re Frederick in this moment, you are watching from that balcony and start to scream your fool head off. Maybe you just think you scream, and you might have screamed, but what you really do is clutch at your chest, black dots spanning each eyeball,
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1957 2 2
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And you don't like much. No handholding or brand name sweaters. No phone calls late at night. This is not you. And you certainly don't go for kisses in the rain or cards from the grocery store with…
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1957 4 2
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Had I scoured all five boroughs of New York I couldn’t have found a more perfect imperfect object for my affections. Morgan was crazy as a loon, with the common sense of a mackerel and the emotional stability of a canary. But believing love could conquer
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1957 5 4
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You know how it is, one day a good friend sends you this long note telling you how-the-hell they are or aren't getting along in the frigging world
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1957 4 1
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I’m squatting naked over the hand mirror, feet cold on the terrazzo floor, looking at my winking arsehole.
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1957 36 20
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1957 4 4
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Rhonda looks guilty as it is, don’t you think? That hair! And the unhappiness smeared across her face like war paint after a war.
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1956 12 10
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I'm dying but that's not to say what you think it says. I've crossed the river of myself many, many times before and wandered to the shore, broken and drenched and full of the fever of dyingdreams. Each time was a kind of ritual mask, drying off the beat ofmy newly…
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1956 7 7
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The mountains of humility went silent, / the rain of regency dried its eyes
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1956 23 15
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This is the story of the man whose wife lived in his neck. Every morning, he would turn to her and say, "Hello, Sweetheart. How was your night?" and she would answer, Brilliant! What else?
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1956 5 1
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Sandra exits her bedroom wearing a bikini. It’s celadon green, though brighter, ‘SW#6705 High Strung’, I’d say. A saturated splash of yellow overtakes its straps.
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1956 1 1
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Who do you think are the true intellectuals? I'm a fan of both Gore Vidal and Harold Bloom although most people can't stand either of them. George Plimpton is interesting...
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