1789 16 4
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He ran his forefinger round the rim of the lid then sucked at his fingertip. The texture's like chalk, he thought, it tastes of earth. He hadn't anticipated this — but dipped his finger in again and swallowed. It was like scraping his tongue against a blackboard on…
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178942
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While I was still new at Black & Twigg, shortly before Thanksgiving, Percy brought me a handwritten memo to type, the subject “Turkey Hunt,” addressed to all Black & Twigg employees in the San Francisco office from management. It said that the firm…
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1789147
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where is the magic at?
the spit
the dirt
or the words?
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178933
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Susan was twenty-four when it happened again, but she had neither the patience nor the attachment to see it through.
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1789115
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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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1789119
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He asked me to bury him in Vegas.
Instead, I had him cremated in Trenton.
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178953
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The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue just came out, and all over America librarians are flipping through its pages and rolling their eyes. The swimsuit issue, which isn't actually about swimwear at all, but, is, instead, about young, beautifully shaped female…
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178978
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of any cautionary tale is somewhere found rolling around in your own sweet voice for me. Your sound's still listing there inside my wobbly head. My head is too often in my open hands, grinning behind its face-mask like a parade on…
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178862
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178888
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I can confirm nothing/
but impressions of the world//
that appear beyond my/
body’s reach.
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178833
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Waking in the middle of the night, tangled in the hotel sheets, I wanted to hear the story again: their pilot friend, the war, his specialty. "It's just a screw, son," Dad said, "nothing exotic."
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1788123
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I'm explicating Emily Dickinson when the alarm starts: three long, two short. Lockdown mode. Only there was nothing in the staff bulletin about a drill. So I tell the students to get down on the floor, away from the window. I open the classroom door and lock it from…
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178852
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178821
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Oh no, here is that Whitman man
I’ve heard he is a bounder.
Don’t look his way or catch his eye-
Just get another round, dear.
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178884
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Bare feet on hardwood floor
Twists into circles
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178820
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I remember being sent a picture once from one of my old roommates, Louise, back in Chicago where I came from. The photo was taken when she’d come out for a visit to California. In the picture I am sitting on the front stairs of my house in the Rockridge
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178821
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The air has its dark confessional, and I have mine. Hot is called raw by some, hate mixed with malice for others. I am only separated by this dark window of time from you, but you never feared the lovely or the lonely.
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178832
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There's still a swatch of jelly on his lower lip. Did you notice? That's not the way it's done, even on the tractor.
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17881514
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I bear the wrong gin. Your air conditioner runs cold. It is either frigid or off, the gauge broken. You are not too old to overlook these things. You can't be choosy, but you will never beg. Just an occasional choice as you settle into this…
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178855
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Alessandro was no ordinary demon (what demon is?), insofar as he had Constable Pulce's number. In demonly fashion he had Pulce's number in a way Pulce himself did not.
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178784
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SPOT ON OUR LUNG We sense A stillborn dawn. A furtive, lurking gray, A sleight of dusk, eclipse, that follows Us. TITANIC'S LANTERNS Upon My rain-glazed panes Wet lights from neighbors glow Like lantern beams from shipwrecks…
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1787109
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It was all I was convinced / in designing the encounter.
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178765
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The bar sounds grew (as bar sounds will) until everything rushed together -- clinking glass, tinkling ice, laughter and zippers going down then up.
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178733
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I know I’m slipping
into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone
with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans.
And who is this listening to NPR in the morning
while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,,
peonies han
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178775
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What's the weirdest thing you've ever used as a bookmark? I work in a library. I've seen that, and more.
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1787129
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His knife enters the Maui onion. He minces garlic and applies heat to pan and melts sweet cream butter and browns the garlic first and then he adds the onion and more heat, but it's time that will surely caramelize them. Salt and pepper and splashes of wine for the pan and…
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1787119
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"Jesus was a zombie?" I ask, shocked.
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178787
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We want our lives even-cut, …
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17871610
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178721
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I look at that wall, it has piss-stain yellow paint and water scars from several years of leaky pipes. I say I wouldn’t mind that, if he took out some of that wall.
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