2009 15 11
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is every word is a small step takenaway from you that arcs back to me likea mamba's mouth. I'm not going aroundin place so much as running in circles. You can see my devilry here. You arethe truth here and that makes me the lie. You'renew morning. I'm much, much more…
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2009 10 8
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I drink with my thinking problem intact.
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2009 11 4
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1987. Recently, I told a teenager who was smoking a cigarette in an elevator that he should put it out. “You a cop?” he asked.
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2008 14 13
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The patient people who work with the insane are not my kind of people. They are too entertained by the oddness of the inmates and act with a superior sense. I, on the other hand, am odd myself, searching for adherents to my view. The inmates knew me as such and agreed…
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2006 29 12
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When I walked into the local police precinct to meet with a detective about the scope of my rights, I was thinking about Rocco, the adored dog of a long-ago life.
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2006 10 4
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Two thousand and two was the worst year for love in the history of sports. People carried their sadness around in wheelbarrows.
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2005 4 4
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You were watching TV when it began. That much is obvious, since you have always watched TV on Thursday nights, and Thursday was when it began for everyone in Polisville. Around 11 PM, a train on its way to a Nevada landfill jumped the tracks. It's a secure landfill, and the…
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2005 10 7
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I. Happy Ending? Why Not! My wife and I got divorced and my little dog died and I decided I'd had enough of Seattle, so I hopped a boat to Belize, and soaked up the sun and gained back some weight and, by God, I got happy again. And I met this cool…
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2005 4 3
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I execute my plan (conceived hours earlier while painting toenails) to go next door to the 7-11 clone and buy some coffee. I am too lazy to walk six blocks to the grocery store. I understand that this is a problem but I will deal with it later I swear. …
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2004 6 2
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The stainless steel tiles are cool upon the soles of her feet. Attendants have arranged all of her equipment, both digital and mechanical, including ink and needles. An overhead screen snaps into view, and his young muscled body is revealed.
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2004 23 12
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Down cellar, my father showed me where he kept his beer stash. It was in a cubbyhole under the bulkhead, where Mom never thought to look.
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2004 28 8
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The first flight is effortless
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2003 4 3
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If I play my accordion too loudly while you're painting, you complain. You stamp about in your room under mine. You fetch the broom from the closet and use it to thump vehemently on the ceiling. I feel the vibrations through my feet.
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2001 4 2
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1.) Please discuss any real-life problems you may have encountered having to do with the concept of “the look” or “the male gaze” as propounded in some of the feminist criticism readings we've done thus far this semester.
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2000 12 10
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You wanted to be a writer. Now you’re a writer.
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2000 2 1
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The crowd gathered around the dying man's bed, waiting for his last words.
He was a genius. The most prolific writer and philosopher to ever live. He wiped his ass with the words of Shakespeare. The thoughts of Plato, Socrates, Descartes, and Nietzsche w
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1999 14 8
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Martín stood over the slow, labored panting as if it were a mystery he could not explain. The dog lay on the frayed pillow bed, a knot of fur and skin, in his father’s office. One eye, like an almond floating in milk, stared up at the boy.
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1999 12 6
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I seem to be at a crisis in this cursed writing life of mine[exclamation point] I am too depressed to squeeze another uncannily inspiring observation out of my pert[comma] sassy self[semi-colon] I waiver hysterically between feverish confidence and a pai
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1998 11 9
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Dude -- I DON'T want to date your boat!
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1997 14 6
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Sometimes she imagined the piles of Dr. Nishad's medical waste at the end of productive day at the hospital. Stacks and heaps of connective tissue, lung matter, gristle and bone, cancerous clumps of tongue and stomach and ropes of bad muscles like wrung,
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1996 10 8
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Sand underfoot.It's raining I say …
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1996 10 6
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A new constellation in the sweet hereafter.
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1996 9 5
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1996 12 6
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Opposite the foothills, on the field's southern edge, was a stand of old eucalyptus trees, each one a gnarled sentry with bark like burnt skin peeling from its trunk.
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1996 15 7
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“Black is up, red is down,” I said, knowing he turned to pleasant memories of lawbreaking when he felt discouraged. I asked him to meet me for coffee. He said he hadn’t bought a coffee in a year.
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1995 26 18
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I am complicit in the darkness
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1995 41 12
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Within seconds, I strip her free of all that she wears. Her toes are polished the color of plump pink tulips.
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1994 45 17
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1993 18 11
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Last Christmas Eve, my Nana shot my grandfather in the foot because he wouldn't stop boning the woman up the street. So on Christmas Eve, after Nana drank a bunch of those baby-sized Miller Hi-life beers, she went upstairs, got her pistol, and said, “I'm gonna…
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1992 0 0
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I was born upside down, the umbilical cord looped twice around my neck. My mother claimed she was so busy working the swing shift at the hospital that she didn’t even know she was pregnant at first. But I found this hard to believe. Of course she knew. My
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