1584 9 10
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For instance, my sister's husband. If I say brown socks, yellow boxer shorts, fishnet undershirt. If I say plastic bag and two tepid beers. And a voice that glides to falsetto when he: you're a tad too obscene for my taste, Julia, while he tries to light the filter end of…
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1583 2 1
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“They say she lives alone out there.” “What, like out in the woods?” “Not like way back in a cabin or anything, but in a little house out there off the road. I'm not even sure she has a car.” “What, does she…
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1583 3 2
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I remember when I first came to California, I heard a mockingbird sitting in a tree, calling out in the names of other birds. It was down in L.A. I was staying at my brother's house in San Gabriel and driving in every day to the campus at UCLA to go to s
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remembering Cahokia, a place we rent near the water's edge, for we dare not enter
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1583 9 7
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awfully evil decisions upstairs in your head that could come back to haunt you in your later years;I'm here to report your zooming about hair isn't really one of them. You have found the infernal wheel works in all four directions at once. Good for you.…
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1583 5 3
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“But I don't HAVE an accent,” she said. With an accent. “Tell him I don't have an accent, y'all.” Looking from one friend to another. Messy ponytail bouncing. I just stared. I may have blinked. A couple times. Every syllable…
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After he got on one knee, and she said, I do. After they watched the televised bombs disappear the city. After everyone fell asleep. After shock and awe, him and her making love…
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1583 7 5
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I got a sixth of a cow in the freezer
That’s not meant to be just a teaser
I guess all I’m sayin’
Come on home and you’ll be stayin’
Cause I got a sixth of a cow in the freezer
Got a rack and a half of ribs
I ain’t tellin’ you no fibs
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Every Monday you brought your Sunday finest to the bus stop...
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The waves assisted in pushing him forward, until he reached the dry sand. He saw a small resort town ahead. The lights were out in the businesses and homes.
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The songs that she used to sing to him still dance in his head while he wrangles equations. The stars in the cosmos spell out her name.
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1583 6 1
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I was quite alone in this small room with the tarp and the dying fire.
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1583 2 2
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1583 6 2
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Sometimes one person's shelter is another person's storm.
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1583 4 2
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Had this been a film, I’d have seen you at once. Extreme close-up: my finger on the green button that opens the door to the park. Long shot: my leaving my bike at the entrance. Slow shot: my walking down the narrow stone path.
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1582 7 7
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As spilled on a sandy Corona del Mar beach/both in moonlight and starlight so lovely/and strangely sad as if receding still
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1582 8 8
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It is the first day of summer, a blue-green afternoon, and we sit beneath the English oak, Quercus robur. Everything has at least two names. It is the first day of summer, or the last day of something else.
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1582 11 5
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If I felt like reading a book
then I would read a book
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1582 10 6
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If you're a Boomer, your brain is teaming with decades-old Pop tunes that you just can't forget. The real reason you can never remember where you put your keys? Too many of your brain cells are clinging to every last lyric to “Fire and Rain,” “Free…
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1582 4 2
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How hard it is to pretend to be someone else. Alone, together, in the silence... I thought about how you must really like me to act quite like that. I wanted to hold your hand and read the unsent love letters.
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1582 11 7
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Except with the language I was born to./
Occasionally, with painters and collagists-//
dead now, typically- who can’t voice/
opposition to my misappropriations.
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1582 2 2
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He just had to tell somebody. Anybody.
So he called up his publisher, L., who agreed to meet him at Oliveira’s for a drink. It only took about ten minutes to walk there from his big duplex in the Elmwood, where he was still living with his wife among
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1582 0 0
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Like some beautiful yet macabre puppet, she was suspended on strings of wire, painstakingly threaded tubing flowing into her cavities, through her chambers, around her mechanics.
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1582 2 2
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He began life as we all do, an almost indeterminate blob. Ultrasound sonar plotting his outline on screen. The echo chambers of his beating heart dispelling the ectoplasmic impression of mere ghostly existence. His rudimentary …
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1582 9 7
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I want to tell you things you do not know.
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1582 3 1
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As a rule, she calls me whenever she’s waiting for her train or bus. ‘Hiya… How’s life-’ she starts off sweetly. Even though I should know better by now, I can only respond in the same old way. I’ll say: ‘Hi Kate!’. Next, I’ll try to te
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1581 14 6
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She drinks a chocolate martini. I fold myself up and slide into her pocket.
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1581 12 7
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In time, I will forgethow he said "smooshie" for "smoothie"and "eyebrowns" for "eyebrows,"how his upper lip dimpled when he laughedin that uproarious, wild toddler way.How he wheedled to be wrapped and rocked,after a bath, even at age five,his long calves uncovered by…
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1581 0 0
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“Hello, Cheryl” the voice on the other end of the phone replied. It was strong but raspy, yet quiet and controlled. The fellow sounded like he had a frog in his throat.
“How do you know my name?” she asked.
“I know a lot of things about y
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