2893 11 10
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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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28911416
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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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28892217
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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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288811
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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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288776
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Soon the entire sky load of constellations
was carried across the bumpy fields
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288785
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But the silver Corvette is like the inside of a church. It's a sacred place. The white leather interior is spotless, luxurious. The dash is real wood, walnut, he says. He caresses it like a body, like a woman.
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288788
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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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28835421
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"You are not a vintage radio. Not even close."
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28823423
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I wrote a fucking poem about you
And you’ll like it
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28822213
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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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28812013
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disorderly black squirrels / inhabit upper Michigan
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28803719
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It had been so long since the telephone had rung, he’d forgotten the sound.
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2879139
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28741411
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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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287300
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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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287300
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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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2872137
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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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28712115
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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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286973
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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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286774
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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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286521
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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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2861137
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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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2861147
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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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286052
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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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285912
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I hope I don’t have aches and pains in heaven
Cause here on Earth I ache in all my parts
These old bones don’t have the spring they used to
I sure hope heaven has electric shopping carts
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285754
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The morning of her suicide, Nonny Rice received a letter.
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2857116
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Last-minute women notice me and latch on, converging in narcotized spirals, old sunflowers twisting towards a fake light. Ugly, used up people, turning like dirty snow, terrified of facing the sunlight alone, of the hour long drunken drive home.
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285600
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“I lay in bed every night and wonder who is lucky enough to go home with you.”
That was all it took. She was. You are. Let’s face it: anyone that poses that question is.
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28551410
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I think he viewed Communion as an act of hygiene that allowed him to go on being fiery and self-determined.
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28543324
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your mania for sentences / has dried up your heart
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