1419 0 0
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Mustard stings the corner of his lips. He swipes it away with a finger, and looks closer at the hot dog. The piece of meat is ripped open like a sliced finger stuck in a doughy bandage
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1419 3 1
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whenever i see youit feels like birds are flyingin and out of my facemy head is ghost-like and birds flythrough iti want to hold the birds insidemy head and turn them intosex maniacs
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1419 8 8
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I invited Henry to go out with me and Marge, suggesting he ask Ellen who he dated a while back and who still asked about him, but Henry shook his head “no” and said “out things” were just too boring at our ages — and besides, since his…
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1419 8 1
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He was a Jack Russell terrier
hanging like a baby
in a carrier
strapped to my chest
He had all four legs
wrapped around me
and was licking me
with his long tongue
I asked him what his name
was, and in a real low voice
he said
Min
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1419 2 2
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We walk though the streets of London, New York, Paris, Prague, Barcelona, Skegness, inhaling air heavy with metaphors, eyes set alight by the microscopic pyrotechnics of quotidian symbols hitherto debased by the outmoded conventions of a bankrupt civilisation decomposing in…
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1419 0 0
|
This time he was dressed in a snap-brimmed hat, zoot suit with a gold chain and two-toned shoes; something out of a sad, lost Los Angeles past. I had no choice but to follow him as he walked down stairs that led to the Metro. We stood near one another,…
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1419 0 0
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1419 6 5
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Before you tripped on the third rail, you were like any other: coat a shard of midnight-blue, eyes filled with gratitude but for nothing. You were a lost coyote on a snowy hill. With sad magnificence you wandered, terrorizing passengers who secretly wished to pat your…
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1419 10 1
|
I saw a woman / at the bar tonight
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1418 1 1
|
“Forever you will be mine” she said to me, and of course I did not believe her. She was a romantic and so was I, and such words habitually dripped out of her lovely mouth like honey from the comb, in a never-ending flow of flattery which I am ashamed to s
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1418 1 1
|
They say I'm supposed to see everything as a nail, but I have a silver head. Too soft for bang-bang. Too soft for anything but sitting on a shelf. I sat in her classroom for twenty-five years. She was proud of me and pointed often to the words inscribed on me that I can't…
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1418 3 1
|
Don’t get me wrong. Maria Shriver is hot, but her angled face makes me think a knife thrower is out to get me.
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1418 2 0
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I was about sixteen or seventeen when James Miller had a stroke and died. He was a friend of my father's and a preacher-guy. The last time our church had been that full was at the barbecue the weekend after the church was built. Somehow, the structure went…
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1418 5 1
|
At 19 words, the whole piece is a snippet.
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1418 1 1
|
1Paradise Lost is cast into the lake of fire. Satan tells John Milton to rewrite it in 140 characters or fewer.2Filippo Marinetti languishes in a dismal rural idyll. His hand, possessed, scrawls euphonic odes to the moon with a quill.3Henri Michaux floats through the…
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1418 6 0
|
“The first thing you must remember,” Polly tells the Levensons, “is that every penny you spend on your guests is that much less you can spend on your horses.”
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1418 4 1
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IV. From Hoover Dam The intent of passive presence wreathes an endless ring, Invisible, beyond all thoughts and change to sickness. This hour beats sibylline as vacancy, breathing Through mouths that do not taste their nothingness. I do not know where you are;…
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1418 5 4
|
He tells me that he thinks he reached out as he needed healing
and I wonder if I should diagnose him on the spot,
explain what years of therapy taught me about him.
I don't.
Instead I compliment a photograph of the pot plants he grows, organic,
|
1418 10 5
|
the
unutterable
things of
this
world
|
1418 8 7
|
Orchids strewn over the floor...
|
1418 17 7
|
the burning thrusts/
of yellow in defiance of the frost
|
1418 10 2
|
Everything I understand / is in danger.
|
1418 12 9
|
We perform our chosen duty— naming/
beauties and atrocities within
|
1418 3 2
|
A short time ago, a man who lived near me got angry. He woke up one morning and torched his house, with his wife and stepdaughter still inside. He drove up I-35 to the Georgetown airport, got his plane, and flew it into the Echelon Building in Austin.
|
1418 10 7
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I like the cool and dark beneath my rock./
It protects me from the glare and scorch/
of noonday sun and the chilling shadows/
of midnight moon.
|
1418 6 4
|
when you betrayed the vain ambition of my death,/I did not complain.
|
1417 0 0
|
The white Boeing 747, all three hundred and sixty eight seats of it, prepared to depart from Johannesburg Airport. Mild conditions on a clear flight path coupled with the soothing voice of the first officer didn't allay my unease. I offered a friendly nod to the…
|
1417 2 1
|
Butter me up, moon lover. Remember, I was once your warm and hot goddess of flowers, washed to shore with the others you may have forgotten. Now the issue of the earth gets nearer, and we can see each other once again, if only in our dreams.
Just be
|
1417 2 1
|
When she would leave my pillows still smelled like her. I would just inhale her for hours afterwards, sex and honeysuckles.
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1417 14 5
|
“In other words you're going to lie through your teeth..."
|