1448 5 2
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Once there was a man who wrote in code. He was comfortable among substitutions
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144810
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The doctors said, when she was born, that the gills would eventually fade away on their own. Nothing to fear, they said; no more unusual than the rare child born with a tail, or a dense pelt of fur, or a single sharp tooth jutting from its new pink gums.
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1448117
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She had just done it in the backseat with the man she decided would be her father. Or maybe it was the cast of his eyes under the dim bar lights. Maybe she insisted that this had to be done, to relive the night under the stars, under a dented roof of a station…
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144831
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My beloved lets me crawl into bed
and put my feet on him
since his skin is
warm and hot like a fire roaring from within
his soft flesh.
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1448128
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We suffer//
the one agony only- of having no longer/
any physical effect nor way to speak/
of what we watch to those we watch.
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144800
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The young man pulls out his wallet, grabs a couple of bills and stops short of handing them to the bedraggled man. “So how do I know you’re not going to go out and buy some crack with this money?”
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144864
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your words that came crashing over me/
so cold the clear shock was like salt water
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144821
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Soon the world is on film that is burning.
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1448169
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The blood is memorable/
as is the copper taste of that/
momentary certainty of lockjaw.
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144841
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Zusman snored on the sofa as Motel gathered his belongings in the dark. He moved quietly as had become his custom in the mornings. Initially he had tried not to wake his nephew on his way to work in the…
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144864
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I woke up to the humming
of an empty space in the shape of a sweatshirt,
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14481511
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When Lois finally found him down there, Johnny was wedged between a large rock and the trunk of an old, long since fallen, cottonwood tree. She said as she got to him, she heard his gurgling breath, fighting fiercely to stay alive. When she saw the deep, gathering, red…
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144822
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“The window is a much better place to read,” she said.I wasn't aware she was talking to me, at first. In my typical manner, I was thinking about far off possibilities and realities completely detached from my own. Yet, here she was, a far off…
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144831
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The trouble with alarm clocks is naturally that they are miserable. And their curse is that their misery is useful: we employ them because we want to get away from them. But we would never have one as a friend.
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144811
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I still picture her waving her bare arms and hands into the purple bellied clouds above the trees, her crooked smile, the spiraling silver maple seeds cascading soft circles around her determined reach, as though the very tree limbs shaping the sky above
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144786
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Our painter man was killed by a bunch of snotty kids who were making fun of him. A gun went off. What is a noodle to do? He wasn't sitting alone in his world, anymore. Where was his famous straw hat? His trusty pipe? He desperately needed to smoke…
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144743
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Her son was doubtless the biggest wanksta that ever went to Andrew Jackson in the whole crumby history of the school.
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144754
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I got no good hubcaps
My van is up on bricks
It's held together with duct tape
And a couple of crummy sticks
I caught the guy who did this
And tied him to a tree
I kicked him in the windpipe
And kicked him in the knee
I'm a man witho
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144710
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Smiling, holding hands, Joe and Lara basked in the sunshine of the mid January day as they approached the diner. The temperature was warm enough for golf. Joe had played in far colder weather in spring and fall.
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1447107
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You stretch my heart / in sacred ways
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144720
|
Meanwhile stars continue to surprise...
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144722
|
Or, do my own red flags counter balance his. My back and forth, my restlessness, my one foot out the door, my ‘once a leaver… always a leaver’, my pitter patter for a former flame... peppered with my transgressions, my mistakes. Or, worse, the way I have
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144767
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I love you because your eyes are both crossed
When you do it, because you’re focused
On the inside of the universe
I love you because
You’re on a roller coaster
Through life
And I can ride along
For the thrill of it
I love you because
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144711
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He roared back at her, shaking his empty gun in his right hand, waving his left hand in the air. “I am George Burnett, esquire, late of Balliol College, Oxford! I am a hunter, a killer of pigs! I do not fear you, bear; take the pig and be content!”
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144700
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Fat Patty sniffs the delicate waft of peat and sidles over, proffering a grope in exchange for a few wet-lipped swigs. Hell yes.
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144753
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Any form of exertion would defile what we are trying to do
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144754
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this is where we end --
the exorbitant eye of forgotten days.
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144700
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You shine brightest under a starlit skyThe moon reflects your beautyAs the wind sings your name sweetlyIt was under the heavens that we promised togetherThat I'll hold your hand and you'll be mine forever... You glow brightest when the sun is at its highestYour radiant…
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144755
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There’s someone in the audience who is immolating himself
Cutting his own leg over and over with a pen knife
And groaning: “Oh God, oh God”
And all I can think from up at the podium is
This guy must absolutely hate these poems
I am reading
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144784
|
It was cold and clammy, but then it got worse. Far worse. Any opportunity to celebrate the unity and harmony of tolerance was soon cancelled.
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