1536 10 8
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My first love was a woman of principle. Never deny your man was her motto.
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1536 3 2
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I climb up on the sofa and stand next to him. I smell something.
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1536 11 6
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1535 17 9
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A young girl wavering between celibacy and punk mother-lust despair came to visit us each night
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1535 3 4
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Wednesdays were humiliating. Third graders had to bring in twenty-five cents for class dues. If you forgot, the teacher would write your name on the board and it would stay there until you settled your debt. My family could afford the weekly quarter; the problem was…
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1535 1 1
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Methuselah. That’s what they call him, the regulars that ride my train. Other things too, but Methuselah is the one that sticks in my mind. It seems to fit. It’s not as cruel.
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1535 2 1
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1535 5 1
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I lift up my sweatshirt and reach with a full fist into my belly button. This is where the fat comes out.
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1535 19 8
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...collapse of the human world. Go, cell phones!
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1535 10 8
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“I have a theory,” she said on their first date, which was at an Indian restaurant where the music was a lovely singsong but the chef seemed enraged as he clapped a ball of dough between his hands, then threw it into the flames. And her date, whom she…
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1535 3 3
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Sitting in the car, John had the urge to kill himself.
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1535 16 10
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Lavender, a Liberal Betty, batty from hormones, in a fanciful fit, named her daughter Lavender. Husband Don winced. Brothers Donald, John, Billy, and Tom were puzzled and pleased by this sister, this girl, who was a little bit like them, yet not like them at…
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1535 11 3
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Ego bereft of consistency Betrays a heart hungering to toll. Unable to trust its will Or harbor imaginary gods, It gains a hold melding into a role whose proven viability Can give convincing cover To buy time to fabricate An identity that feels unique, Yet…
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1535 2 2
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Meet Carl. He's six-three, two hundred and thirty pounds. He has light-brown hair,…
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1535 12 7
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no need to write it if you/
live it, conscious of the light, the/
shape, the sound, the taste, and shadow.
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1535 2 1
|
My father had a terrific argument with his wife, my stepmother, a flaming harridan with a voice like hydrochloric acid, and insisted on driving me back home to California.
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1535 7 5
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It is not unusual for farmers to see the future before it’s begun—but I am not speaking here only of the need to hope but more. . . .
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1534 5 3
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It's 2am. The wind is moving at speed, whipping gently the tree branches, and their leaves rustle simultaneously to create a audible sound, like hands flipping through sheets of paper, or that feeling you get on your fingertips when going across a textured surface. I'm…
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1534 3 1
|
My dad was an Army Reservist stationed in the U.S.—New York and Texas—the bugler in his corps. He golfed on summer weekends at Hazeltine in the course of his career. I had seen houses water colored prettily within the lines on L.S.D., after noticing not
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1534 11 5
|
There are no inspirations./
There are only the things I like/
and the much more numerous//
things I do not like.
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1534 10 8
|
you drove by the woman standing on the verge the woman with the shoulders of a long distance swimmer and you told yourself her story: she'd slept in the wiregrass she carries…
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1534 1 1
|
years later, she won’t go near the trees
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1534 12 5
|
She sometimes ate her dinner standing up, in front of her living room window.
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1534 13 9
|
Remember the equatorial heat, the flies,/
the lurking hum and scream of jungle,/
the squalor? Remember the functionary.
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1534 5 4
|
If you can imagine a ghost taking a shower then you can imagine the kind of emotion I have in mind.
|
1534 2 1
|
I'll strip off the skin down to the begin again.
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1534 7 5
|
The nerves are birds that guide us to feeling the loop and lift of reverie.
|
1534 14 6
|
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1534 6 1
|
The old man is dead,
body propped in its cart
like the dead El Cid
strapped on his horse by Jimena
to save Valencia,
and yet...
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1533 9 11
|
The brain taints everything it brings to us/
with its limited apparatus, its precepts,//
all the things it thinks it knows.
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