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He did not seek a place on a cabinet, nor to impress stockholders with placards of wealth and return; he did not enumerate the downtrodden and asocial with advertised miracle treatments, or write a best seller on the markings of success. All he did, all h
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125533
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You and she might make love here, next week,
and I'll buy my own razor, switch from baths to showers.
I shave my legs in my imagination.
They, like life, are smooth.
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125581
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Buck, naked, has no words. The best he can manage is a dopey strangulated cough. His wife, who is clothed, stands before him, next to the waterbed that took Buck half a day to force into the trailer.
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125597
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Savvy as a nine-year-old playing poker with high rollers in Las Vegas, that was Paulie. She'd finally thrown Dick Weasel out the night before, but that morning Diana'd shot down their plan of sharing the house in a “man-free”…
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125552
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Can we ever truly know reality? I don’t think so. But fly in comfort my friend. Lean back and enjoy the thrust of those engines.
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1255188
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I had a sister-in-law who was a licensed nutritionist. Not sure what “licensed” means, but she had some certificate and worked in a hospital. Hospitals! Places not known for their cuisine, much less their nutrition. —So, what do you…
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125531
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Little Roy Farrell'd taken a bite of his fourth grade teacher's ear as she bent close to help him sound out the word “grace.” Doc Felter had sewn most of teacher's ear back on, but by seventh grade Roy still couldn't read and never understood that he'd in
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125500
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There was much joy in Galilee, for it was not often that two marriages, not merely one, were celebrated in one ceremony.
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125511
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Stanley had a crush on Sarah. They were in Ms. Goldman's freshman chemistry class together fifth period. That day they were working on homework at Sarah's house while her parents were gone. Stanley was in heaven.“Break time!” Sarah woke Stanley from daydreaming,…
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1255129
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Your cairns/
are litter in the streets
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125553
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Well, now it has fallen away some
but I felt better about it when it was raging
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125511
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I planned and planned. I followed the veterinarians around and I took vials of panda tranquilizers when they were not looking, and it was often that they forgot to look. The earth kept shaking, they were hungry, and many did not know what had become of th
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125520
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“Sloshes to sloshes. Drip to drip,” I said, then ceremoniously flushed the toilet bowl, our heads bowed in reverence as Molly and I gave Swimmy its last rites. Swimmy, named by Molly whose overstatement of the obvious is endearing in a three-year-old, was…
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125540
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She had endured three years of abuse for those hot, fleeting moments of tenderness—just enough warmth to keep her second-guessing the bitter frost. Now the ring promised a lifetime of biting back her pain.
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125540
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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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125553
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An electromagnetic pulse/
scrubbed the servers./
The clouds wisped and blew away, empty./
Markets lost what little mind they had.
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125563
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You may want to pretend to leave once or twice, peeking in through a window from a darkened room, to see how they interact. Never leave a new poet unattended with the pack until you’ve determined that the new arrival has learned to fit in with the other w
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125580
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She plucks two eggs from the carton, weighs and measures them with the cup of her palm, the curve of her fingers.
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1254108
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When you need a vacation...from everything.
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125486
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It must be nice not to have to worry About certain things because those things are not yet In your circle, or in your circus, of life. I don't begrudge you for being almost grown in A much different, sweeter place and time. I'm thrilled By…
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125411
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"I'm just saying," the older man continues, "We oughta be ready in case she hits."
"We'll be fine," the woman says. "We've weathered every storm that's ever come through here just fine."
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125421
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It was R who embodied love for me. We’d eaten gummi worms in the park, held them up to the sun, yellow and green and translucent. When we returned to her flat, they were everywhere. I’d never seen such a thing. They hung in the air, these gummi worms.
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125496
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Wind was a sorry excuse for force
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125411
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I lost my job but the government found me a new one. Now the government pays me to pretend I’m a travelling businessman. I fly around the country to imaginary meetings. It’s part of a project to make it look like the economy is doing well.
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125464
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His beloved are paper-thin when he blows into the free end. Green tint from copper.
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1254106
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The face had become a chilling death mask.
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125482
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This is the poem you leave behind that you die in the middle of.
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125411
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On his way to his first fishing expedition in the Bay Area, the man remembered the rustle and shimmer of the willows by the muddied Jemez River in New Mexico, cold beer, the clean camaraderie of childhood friends. He walked along a path choked with greenery to the San Pablo…
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125474
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I’d look for a fork and quickly stab a piece of it and bite into it, feeling good about the finality of things.
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125421
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No one knows where the wind comes from, but sure as hell it comes.
The executioner glances round the reception area. Nods to himself. Function versus form. Anodyne, instantly forgettable, like hotel rooms. Perfect.
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