1498 4 1
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It was one of those sweltering afternoons that San Diego endures only several times a summer. I'm riding on El Cajon Boulevard, with my friend John in his old Chevy pickup. John is a lifelong San Diego resident and fanatical Charger backer. He's talking up some…
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1498 8 0
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Beautiful, he thinks, as he taps the ash of his cigarette over the balcony, but this is not good enough.
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1498 2 0
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He had a lean build, except, remarkably, his midsection was perfectly barrel-like. As if he kept an alien lifeform in his belly, cultivated by years of Pabst and Yuengling transfusions.
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1498 9 7
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1498 1 1
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While Leif was still very young, his emotions were very easy to read, for they appeared on his parchment coloured skin, named in his mother's writing. When he was seventeen, Leif fell in love. She was a pretty maid, one of the college servants who kept his…
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1498 8 5
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Love me like a crutch
Love me when I'm strong
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1498 9 3
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Remembering his body makes me think of Egyptian cotton sheets dried in the sun. He smelled crisp and clean even after sweating hard. His hair fell in golden spirals down his cheeks, his back, over his forehead, and captured light just like the gilded halos on…
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1498 0 0
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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...
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1498 2 1
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Their tongues were dry, her milk was gone, and the last bit of water in the plastic jug had evaporated.
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1498 0 0
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Holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in a tissue in one hand, a round shape that balances the round yellow burst of light that is her dress. While the flesh of her chest bulges forward and she balances as though in a holding pattern in flight.
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1498 2 1
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I stared at these meteor impacts, feeling far away, a lone sentient cloud admiring the scoured yet wondrous earth-of-this-girl below me, the lean slope of her side, the soft dip of her neck, the sharp edge of her cheekbone, the monarch wing of her eyelash
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1498 0 0
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He rolls in unbidden across the stubble fields /
Old acquaintance astride a newly booming cloud/
Under sky an alien shade of strawberries whipped/
Her watch stops ticking out the rest of her/
scheduled breathing poses
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1498 4 2
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Last night we slept with books in the bed.
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1498 4 4
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"...,beautiful, yet neutral, an oversimplistic reading of the people we meet."
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1498 0 0
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It is your hamsa that protects us,” the girl whispers to me.
“Then I shall give it to you,” I reply.
“No,” she says in the unselfish innocence of her youth. “It is yours and you must keep it.” I smile and kiss her dirty forehead. Eternity passes whil
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1498 4 4
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“What. Is. That?” Sid asked, staring at the shaggy ball of fur sitting in the living room. Its tongue hung out of its mouth and its tail beat against the carpet.“This is Ranger,” his mom said. “I don't know what breed he is, but he's a sweetie…
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1497 2 0
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"I see flashing bright bacteria floating in the air," he replied, not bothering to think about the words. "I see puffs of smoke issuing from inappropriate objects. Fingertips. Baby carrots. Furniture... Oh, Christ," he seethed, arching again. "Get me some
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1497 4 2
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I left Iowa in august when the air was thick and sticky. I had been there three years minus a few days when the boy I'd been sleeping with packed almost everything I owned into my car and waved goodbye. In Baltimore I had few friends and a job teaching English at a…
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1497 4 0
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No one commented on her altered appearance, although Will in Accounts said he quite liked her hair like that, so she assumed that no one could see the snakes. But she still felt self-conscious, exposed. She had to remember not to talk to them when she was…
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1497 6 3
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Her boyfriend is into U.S. presidents and professional wrestling. He is reading biographies of both occupations and says this helps him to appreciate gray area, decisive action. Lives of great men, he explains.
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1497 4 4
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people keep trying to get me/ "out of the house"./ they see fun in me, and cool in me,/ and want to spend time with me,/ and i am flattered most sincerely./
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1497 17 6
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...Rabidosa rabida- no spinner/
of webs but a quick and cunning
solitary hunter. Anxiety overwhelmed
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I asked him his name and here’s the kicker, Leiby. It means lion.
You know what? I said mine is Levi, how do you do.
That means to accompany—like in the root of the word, it’s got that meaning.
As in levayah, funeral in Hebrew. Does that only
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1497 4 2
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Feeding you a taste of croissant
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1497 4 1
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You can't always be everything
you were expected to be
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1497 10 7
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“What do you want for Father's Day?” she asks. “Sex,” he says, his mouth curling at the corners, “and a bottle of Shiraz.” …
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1497 8 5
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Perhaps my grandparents, Fred and Lela, when they were growing up....
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1497 4 4
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From the rumple of pre-dawn Queens, sure South on 95, to almost Savannah by dark; still cold, but we’re full of what’s coming:
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1497 1 1
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I am only ever
What you seem to be
Without the leverage
Of sweet reality
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