1454 3 4
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Richard gets me started, tells me to undress the two women mannequins in the storefront window
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14541210
|
We are our own pathogens.
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145433
|
His granddaughter, Ivy, sat on his knee looking at an old photo album she found under the couch during one of her afternoon explorations. She made him wipe off the dust and cobwebs before he took her through all the pictures, per normal protocol. The albu
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145496
|
I saw Vincent one day, sitting at a café table that was situated right next to the quays of the Seine, with another artist by the name of Bernard. Vincent had his back to me, and he was leaning forward in his usual hyper-excitement, gesturing wildly
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145422
|
He sees the dogs through the window, his babies, sleeping on opposite ends of the couch. His girl, lying supine, hind legs spread, grotesquely, almost comically, as far as they can without being flush with the cushion. His boy, Cosmo, face down, the power…
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145400
|
look at the shape here / is it not pleasing to the eye?
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14541110
|
Back then we used to dance slowly to Sam Cooke's “You Send Me” on your parquet floors, whispering about planting our vegetable garden, planning to seed the lawn with centipede grass, promising to count all the red cars that came down the street.
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145372
|
They left the breath of their souls
upon the lips of others
and jumped in with all abandon
They felt the winds on their skin
as the heart flew by them
on its way into the lost nature of time
This time they flee the country of the soul
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1453115
|
I haven't been here in a while!
|
145366
|
Winter will be cold this year, you tell her. You read that. She says she is with child with her new husband. You tell her she's forty-five, it is selfish. The baby. It's fine. You demand to be at her tests. Evan may let you, she says. He's a doll. She would never use that…
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145321
|
Even at five years old, I could tell that Eloise was haunted by ghosts that shook her core, leaving her dangling and seeking stability in slowly repeating her compulsive routines.
|
1453109
|
The bird sat there some time. Several minutes. My wife and I grabbed out i-Pads and took pictures.
|
145382
|
The lawyer is having a party the next weekend.... He's celebrating because he won a court case to have his alimony reduced.
|
145300
|
I made a man of men. He made a man of me, the way all men are finished, in tragedy and sorrow. Together, we make a story, for other men, brothers and sisters.
|
145311
|
she felt something warm and wet on her ankle and it was producer #1's green tongue and he was still sitting down behind the table and it traveled slickly and caressed her calf with a sensuousness she wouldn't have thought something so ugly could possess
|
145300
|
She dropped the bundle of faggots she had collected and spun around with her mouth open.
|
145341
|
I was like a bullet shot from a university tower
|
145341
|
This day, oh, this day… shoved joy and gratitude in my face, then tossed in beauty and just a touch of grace. A Piping Plover set my sorrows by the side, nabbing morsels when it could, then racing from the tide. Junior Eagle perched…
|
145386
|
My table offers up the gutted calf/
with carrots and potatoes yanked /
alive and whole
|
145331
|
okay fine, on the count of three
|
145341
|
Dragonfly She danced out of the burning rubble, wrapped in a shawl made of iridescent silk. It must have been her grandmother's. Her arms were wings, the silk translucent and fluttering. Fire fell from the sky. Thatched roofs, walls of mud-daubed sticks, the huts…
|
145300
|
Make paddles of his hands
Use his skull to bail
Rig his thigh bones for a mast
And his skin to make a sail
|
145321
|
My cousin and I walked around the village at night. It was beginning to rain, but we walked on. She had a jacket. I didn’t because of course. She said: “Sometimes I just want to know if he’s settling or he’s really in love with me.”
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145220
|
Her plastic shopping bag brushes your leg. You look into it and all you see is a 2 liter of Coke, a bag of Lay’s potato chips and a package of Oreos. It’s so oddly touching, so purely American, that your heart breaks a little bit. You want to hug t
|
145221
|
|
145253
|
I've lost the remote control to my brain
|
1452106
|
The screen door slowly opened. I was expecting the second / coming of perfection.
|
145200
|
the strength in you i envy/ leaves me naked, sweating in the dust/ while you possess what ethic i pretend to have/ in the face of those who expect from me/ so much more.
|
145200
|
At Christmas, the van de Kamps made the trip to suburban Downer’s Grove and presented Courtney with a t-shirt saying “My other grandma is a grim battleaxe.”
|
145220
|
If you had gotten pregnant our last time, in 1967 (when you lied and told me “I guess I’m finally over you,”) then our son could have been that man you saw with the drooping moustache and his coattails flying in the lobby of the building in Louisville,
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