1672 17 9
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Words darken with smut and irony over time.
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16712014
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I become the accumulation/
of appetites
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167110
|
I laughed maniacally in my head at the thought, but I kept picking at it all the same, the bunnies had plans for us.
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167133
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You compare the brightly-colored wires sprouting from the bandage wrapped around your stepson's head to a bouquet of flowers. The tech sits in a chair next to Brett's hospital bed and holds up line drawings of common objects: cats, boats, skyscrapers,…
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1671116
|
I write poems as if language matters.
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167165
|
When I first started out in my working career, I made it the habit of obtaining jobs with companies that were about to go under. (I wrote more books while on unemployment than by any other method.) I was a real bloodhound at sniffing out the pre-dawn od
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167154
|
...listening to the ache of errs our mouths had become.
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167140
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“Well, aren’t you the cutest thing?”
Shelly looked around for the source of the line and one of the better looking bar flies met her gaze. He wore a faded t-shirt with a swoosh graphic that read ‘Just Do Me‘. True to its mystical nature, her indefatigabl
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167177
|
I spent most of those days in my car. Stashed in the trunk was a cache of precious stones, neatly sorted and separated, bound in smooth black velvet inside a smooth black briefcase.
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167076
|
The note was a lie, multiplied through each member of its potential audience....
|
167055
|
beat them with fists and purses.
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167053
|
“You’ve put all my anorexic friends on the table nearest the buffet,” I say. “And all my bulimic friends on the other side of the room away from the buffet and the toilets.”
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167022
|
Why yes I began writing this, my bildungsroman, Who is Mitsy Jackson, in spring, 1974 or thereabouts, and thank you so much for asking.
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167043
|
We decide not to go to the emergency room
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167095
|
I fully intend to show Hamilton the delights of soft Oriental carpeting and a delicious new position I learned not long ago. It involves a silk scarf, a leather strap and some aromatic herbs.
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16701011
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She left knives and hot pots with handles akimbo. Like a guardian angel, he turned them in. Like an ungrateful Eve, she turned them back out.
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167076
|
In the blacklight of the storm, mother would tremble, spit and sway as the shutters would clatter and she would give away her balance. It was more than my heart could bear. She would always center her accusation with, “your boyfriend is a rake and a flam.” That…
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16701312
|
My eyes hold my mother. It's not easy being human she tells me. She always told me. Sure, but the stories are lovely. We all know that. We generate the tales, tell the tales, kiss our children. Live on in their eyes, though, don't…
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167051
|
He was choking on the fumes.
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167020
|
She dips a toothpick in ink, running prick over paper, simply to prove herself wrong.
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167097
|
I want to tell you things you do not know.
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167076
|
Despite what the bible says, Shadrach and Meshach had no third brother named Abednego. To pay for his cello lessons, Yo-Yo Ma worked the subways of New York as a busker. Just chill. After Sal went into witness protection, he yearned for a job at the art…
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167021
|
It was all things considered a particularly odd sight, which Annalise did not know how to handle.
|
167085
|
collars of obedience /
discarded in the pyre /
with draft cards and bras
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166921
|
Naked Lady? I know that from somewhere. Then he remembered. That's what they called those old 1930's and 40's Conn saxophones, Naked Ladies. How would Smith know that?
|
16691510
|
No jagged bits of crust were thrust up/
through the prairie’s black gumbo/
to give us cataclysmic mountain views.
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166900
|
“A shibboleth is a test—a way to separate da wheat from da chaff that's as old as the Bible, but as new as the latest trend in men's fashions,” Gus says.
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166922
|
my mouth is open, ready to bite your tiny toes
|
166911
|
she knows that's the natural place of a man, above everything, closest to god, eyes slowly filling with rain.
|
166900
|
Everybody knew Billy Miller. He had messy hair and crooked teeth that he hid behind a thin-lipped smile. He and his friend Jimmy Rodgers, who everyone called Cock on account of his red hair that stuck up like a comb, were inseparable. They liked to ste
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