1384 3 3
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I'm a heathen in the church of the absolute.
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138400
|
A subway train rumbled through the underground and she actually felt it slither under her feet. Her gaze lingered for a moment on the desiccated leaves and the small rectangle of blue cardboard the blustery wind had wedged between the gargoyle's talons.
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138332
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The shadows hang fast on the downs this day: And I hang like the darkness, over heath and down; Since the air there is clearer than the clouds, men say, And I'm lost in the country, I shall turn to town. If the heather is restless, then the fete is …
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138322
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I had the idea while I was in the county jail. I would get jail glasses; I wouldn’t be me; I’d be some other person. I could pretend that it was someone else rotting away in that 8x12 cell.
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138322
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In the small towns of central and southern Illinois there lives a very indecent sort of man.
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138332
|
square mannequin-wives who can’t look in their eyes
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138323
|
I will admit it. // I cannot write poetry / to save my life—
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138344
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Once upon a time I sat in summer chairs beside cool vine walls. This was in a borough east of the major city, where families gathered in seasonal joy, by blooms fragrant, to worship the summer and its might. There is nothing diminutive about the world when one is…
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138333
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we ran that afternoon/across Bayshore lanes/into green blooming fields, beyond all those
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138344
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My story begins where so many have ended, strapped fast to a cold table, just moments from a lobotomy needle and anything resembling the man that I am.
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138384
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Years ago when the smart of it was as nippy as this one.
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138310
|
As the 5 train gained momentum away from Fulton Street, Helen took her seat with the alertness and suspicion of someone who had spent the day negotiating prices with dirty fishmongers.
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138300
|
He stood sopping in front of the mirror, dripping onto the limp puddle of clothing on the floor. He needed a haircut. He needed a shave. He needed to get rid of the two-fucking-inch white hair inside the helix of his right ear. He plucked it—and all the h
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138340
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But that last night in Europe, getting ready to fly out of Amsterdam back to the States, I heard this Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight,” which expressed some of the turmoil and confusion and whole-life hysteria I was feeling inside. Waves of fru
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138354
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Johnny K. didn't much like taking his exotic drugs any more. He now thought that the common reality was already an intense enough trip without wrapping it all up in enough gauze to cause permanent daydreams to the head. He liked his cheap hamburgers…
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138321
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The woman leapt from the top of the burning building. The flames reddened the faces of the watching crowd. The heat pushed them back. The woman hit the ground. The crowd oooooed. If only I'd been a firewoman, I thought, with a ladder as tall as a building and a…
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138221
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“He didn’t finish ‘The Witchcraft of Salem Village,’” Scooter says, tattling on his little brother. I’m projecting him to be a first-round draft pick by the National Security Agency in about ten years.
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1382116
|
Unless they leave you comatose,/
it’s the disasters you remember.
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138231
|
She seizes my hand. I resist just enough to sense her strength.
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138299
|
How many exceptional people/
does it take to change a light bulb?
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138231
|
A friend of mine died and went to heaven. At least I thought he went to heaven. I mean Freddie wasn’t such a bad guy and if he had any faults they were mild peculiarities. Like his girl watching. He was a champion girl watcher. Even in this a
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138243
|
Cliffs are not all I've known, but I've seen them every day since I came to light. When I first broke out of the shell that protected me from feet and poisons, I pushed my way into darkness. It was soil. I could not have survived if it was light, and when I surfaced there…
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138233
|
Now I hear a woman's voice. It sounds familiar, like I know her, but in my daze it is slightly distorted, like I am underwater and she is calling to me beneath the waves. She tells me not to be afraid. Her words are calming; they soothe away the panic and confusion. I…
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138221
|
They put me in charge of developing a drug that stifles fear.
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13821612
|
I am experience and information//
at a small but irredeemable remove.
|
138241
|
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…
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1382139
|
There's a witch in Laurel Canyon.She made Wes a promise.Her bungalow smelled like Parliaments. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive oil. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive, and a freshly opened pack of Red Vines. Wes could have curled up into a ball and fallen asleep on her…
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138222
|
I gave my trumpet case to a girl named Sophie; she liked the velvet inside.She still played with dolls;they would live there,in the dark away from the world.Safe. I was a terrible trumpeter;i missed the high notes in band, squawked like a chicken.I strapped the trumpeton my…
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138255
|
Like when she said the word 'but', it came out ‘bet’.
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138265
|
Anneliese inserted one of her crystal drops in Hymen's left ear and kept her left earring in. For a quarter, she bought a handful of cashews and plopped them on a red napkin.
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