1688 3 3
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He didn't want to read his father's statement. Yet still he lingered, poised over the kitchen table, where his father had left it.
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1688 13 8
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1688 0 0
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I’m not dog-like in any sexy manner, like a Wolf Man who kills livestock and lurks in the shadows on the outer fringes of society, mouth bloodied at the tips, and waking up as a fully functioning human naked in some field. Instead, I lurk among rows of cu
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1688 1 0
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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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1688 7 5
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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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1687 2 2
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The fucking black dress; the fucking black dress that obfuscates whether or not you're pretty in the face, that obfuscates the sound of your voice, that obfuscates the color of your hair, your eyez, your skin,
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1687 15 7
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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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1687 5 5
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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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1687 6 4
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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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1687 4 4
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The figure eight will fall on its side. Become infinity.
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1687 4 1
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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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1687 13 10
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Sin by Nonnie Augustine After my mother died, I met Aunt Shirley. I found her in dozens of snapshots piled in falling apart cardboard boxes we hauled down from the attic. Small girls, with huge bows bobby-pinned right on top of…
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1687 0 0
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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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1687 10 8
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no more trying to keep / the peace, no more trying / to keep every person happy. / Just this: no more.
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1687 1 0
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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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1687 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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1687 21 9
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1687 6 4
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I blame the fucking mosquito net.
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1687 2 2
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There was a man dressed in stately attire. His name was Abacus, which maybe you find strange, but then keep this in mind: it is, after all, just a name.
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1687 6 5
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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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1687 6 3
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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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1687 4 0
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"As the thing lurches upright, I can see now that it is an old woman with snake eyes… a dead old woman with snake eyes and peeling flesh. She is putrid and maggoty. She is coming right at us. She is my mother."
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"I remember thinking, 'Good.'
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1686 12 9
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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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1686 4 0
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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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1686 1 0
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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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1686 13 9
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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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1686 9 7
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I remember meeting you many years later.
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1686 9 2
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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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