1690 3 2
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Her students read their work aloud in class, haltingly, sometimes proudly, and their willingness amazed Miriam. They were immigrants and retirees, carpenters, security guards, Indian nannies, Iranian escapees. She loved their odd word choices, the lack of editorial impulse.…
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169094
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We weren't supposed to talk about Jimmy's glass eye. We just had to watch it stare at us all wonkie, without knowing a thing about it.
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169011
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We begged him to sell us some shade. Just enough for half an hour, until our bus would pick us up and drive us to our next destination, continuing what was turning out to be a purgatory tour of forgotten Mediterranean towns.
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16902012
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Our ironies don’t make us happy
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168955
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Now as my fearful hand goes unwittingly up I search the faraway trees for the closest possible answer I know I don't know. The clever waiting beast is looking my way with an intelligent roving eye that says he likes to hit. It doesn't matter. You're worse…
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1689118
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"I remember thinking, 'Good.'
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168940
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That Loving Feeling
How do I love thee?
I love the bulge
of your breast
along the inside
of my upper arm
when you lie on top
kissing me
I love
feeling the movement
of your nipple
along the tender skin
there
It
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168920
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No matter how you do it, forgetting something doesn’t mean as much once you’ve forgotten.
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168900
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After seventeen years of struggling to wake up early in the morning, I had managed to wake up on my own. Actually, I think it was because I was unable to sleep that I was up so early. I had laid on the bed all night, staring at the dark ceiling, taking in every…
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168910
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Pay attention: our names were Bobby, Didi, Joanie, Mitch and Sam. It was popular in those days to wear big name buttons across your chest, and we’d line up side-by-side as we watched our reflections affix said buttons, anchoring them to our stiff lapels
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168910
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What else, H, is there to say about heartbreak? What else could it be but our hands, cupped as if holding water against our chests, then broken into halves. Or the picture of this one, pretending to load a gun. Or this one, soaked in smoke—asking for
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168922
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Once, I asked my father why Rex turned around three times before settling down for a nap. He told me it was because one good turn deserves another, then he laughed.
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1689139
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I don’t remember much about kindergarten.... The teacher’s name was Mrs. Halverson. She was nice.
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168911
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I like him. I really, really like him in a way that I don’t like guys, not anymore, not after all the dirty lies into get in my pants, the dirtier lies to get out of them later, the indignities and the humiliations and the disappointments.
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168910
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I’m lying on the floor curled up in the foetal position and about six people are stamping on me. [...] It’s really confusing down here, what with all the kicking.
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168992
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Public Wi-Fi ”hotspots” allow men and women to ogle each other discreetly while pretending to write the Great American Novel.
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168965
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It's just another night in the old city, perched in the skeletal radio tower with my collection of telescopes
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168970
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[TURN-ONS: willingness. TURN-OFFS: rejection.]
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16891112
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Tunnel hobos, all hootched up high, think a sign's all about super powers, mind reading, clairvoyance, dig?
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1688129
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How to Boil Water
How to Cook an Egg
How to Eat
How to Think
How to Love
How to Die
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168864
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Luke was in the gutter, his face in stagnant water littered with cigarette butts, condom wrappers, and green shards of glass from broken beer bottles. A man was kicking him in the face with a boot the size of a U-boat, over and over and over again. Blood
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168894
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Creep up behind me one day and prick my skin. I promise you won’t draw blood – for it is ink that will spurt from my veins.
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168875
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Perhaps you have heard the rumors of big money in poetry
Maybe that’s why everybody is writing it these days
Even Emily Dickinson must have heard these rumors
Myself, I suspected as much 50 years ago
And started early to accumulate my hoard of poe
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168863
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It started like this: just him saying, "Nice to meet you, Marie," and me, while I just said his own name back to him, at the same time thinking, "I want you to take me to a hotel room someday, Frederick. I think I’ll like the way you’d make me feel...
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168821
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Bake sweet rolls and make love to your new wife, fall asleep for three years and grow a beard.
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1687157
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In one of the cartoons I watched as a child, Popeye the Sailor gives Olive Oyl a bouquet of flowers. She is thrilled, he walks on air, thinking they will marry. His one-eyed heroism is soon challenged by Bluto however, who pours cement into Popeye's bath. It goes…
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168796
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168700
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Scott was sure his father was reassured by the sticky stains in his Penthouse; Dad found them when Scott was thirteen. Dad had just one issue of that venerable porno, which Scott defiled with his joy. It was not the Penthouse models…
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168744
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The figure eight will fall on its side. Become infinity.
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168741
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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…
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