2858 14 16
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I get it. Poetry is an effort. Language is an effort. Words are an effort. Reading words is an effort. A big effort. It takes energy. Attention. Focus. Who has that? Nobody. So truly. I mean it. You don't have to read this. If you're already reading this you can…
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28562217
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Mama reads about UFOs in paperback books and newspapers with big cloudy pictures. Her girlfriends know about flying saucers, too. They get drunk at night when they are sitting all alone in their living rooms because they are divorced or married to men who
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2856139
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285645
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It’s true enough my status as honorary male has come in handy in my profession, but I never considered matters of the flesh. I feel a surge of warmth between my thighs as if a cock is dangling there, thick and florid. The sensation is oddly exciting.
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2855911
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His feet are the size of thumbs, the segments of his toes no larger than grains of rice.
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28541110
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‘Last week,’ I said, ‘on the radio, there was a competition. The DJ played a sound-bite of a car going over a cattle grid, and people had to phone in to guess which cattle grid it was. I didn’t phone in, but I knew the answer.’
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28542213
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When you live in New Orleans, the only time you ever get to see cows is at the Winn-Dixie 24 Hour Super Store, in the back between the dairy and the seafood.
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28533719
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It had been so long since the telephone had rung, he’d forgotten the sound.
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28522013
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disorderly black squirrels / inhabit upper Michigan
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28501411
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“When he felt most loved, he felt most _ burdened.” Stephen Dobyns When she loved him she burdened him. She knew he felt a pull but he always resisted it. They went to an old refurbished hotel in Venice and asked if they might see the rooms. …
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285088
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Q: “How many husbands have you had, Mrs. Guggenheim?”
A: “D’you mean my own, or other people’s?”
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284674
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“In retrospect, perhaps I should ask my renter’s insurance to cover damage from lava lamp discharges. But I am not a person who enjoys a fracas.”
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28463423
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I wrote a fucking poem about you
And you’ll like it
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28442115
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The dog is there, on sorry legs, with sorry claws. He looks toward the man, the bat, and says, You know me, Man. I know you know me.
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2844137
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It will be a beautiful, luminous, rollicking, transcendent book, the manuscript smudged with tomato sauce and tears.
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284411
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“I killed a man.”
“Whaaattt???” I'd been meditating on the sun. I figured he was trying to jolt me awake.
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284000
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Gerald's law practice wasn't new. He'd worked on the law review and finished near the top of his class thirty years ago. After earning his J.D., he'd gotten a master of law in taxation. His favorite cases required researching legal precedents, and he…
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2838137
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If I had a daughter, this it how it would be. It would be all, Stand up straight, missy, shoulders back, no slouching, and she'd be sulky, sullen, pouting, wilful, and I'd see in her eyes, which would be my eyes, that she was starting to hate me, and I'd
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283721
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[Her adviser] looked at her and tilted his head, smiling. Over his shoulder she saw the M104 bus cruising up Broadway, and considered diving under it. Instead she took off toward the corner, in shame, and he followed. When they parted ways, he took her ha
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2835147
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I am seven years old today and I want the dog by the river, the one with the great mane of hair like my father's who is a singer at night, and with big ears, too, that grow from the top of its head so that I can tug on them if it's being bad or stroke them…
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28343324
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your mania for sentences / has dried up your heart
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283000
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A five-star, world famous hotel nearby even had a new fence put around it recently, to keep out the riff-raff. That would include me. The hired help. A gardener.
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28305421
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"You are not a vintage radio. Not even close."
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282852
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It couldn’t be a worse time for failed novelist Robert Grayson. He’s 40 and falling apart. He’s balding and accumulating a gut. His job writing technical manuals for software looks like it might get cut. Then his wife does the unthinkable and files
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282673
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Conversation becomes Electra, as do her eyes. Electra’s head is grey, like the head of my Frau Freud, Martha. Her intelligent irises are darkly pigmented, and her sclerae are edged with a dramatic, black line of the sort that Cleopatra affected. In ou
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28251211
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"So, like the Goldilocks thing…"
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28241710
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Trent’s had many phases: Madonna, Bette, leather, water sports, rollerblading, haiku, chicken queen, rice queen, muscle queen, daddy. But religion? This is new.
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282354
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The morning of her suicide, Nonny Rice received a letter.
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282293
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A plain oval face, opaque except for a birthmark streaking the right cheek like chicken shit.
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28213619
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"She gnawed her arm off in the morning, before he woke...."
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