1211 1 1
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I held the steam and scrubbed it. How do you do that? asked Willy. How do you scrub steam? It is so, you know, diaphanous. I said to Willy, because Willy was a good man and listened with both ears, we adapt to the heart's convulsions. I send my grammar to a…
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12111610
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My first winter in Massachusetts feels medieval: cold, dark, and endless.
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121132
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The boys were his biggest nuisance. The unwashed guttersnipes poured into the park early, all shoeless and half shirtless. He only imagined how thick the fleas must be in their thick tangle of hair, of which only two didn’t have covered with a cap with an
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121100
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I sat in the kitchen with the phone in my hand. The phone had just stopped ringing. When it rang, its screen lit up with the face of the caller. It vibrated and played a tune called "Dusk 2 Dawn." Now the kitchen was silent.
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121143
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Gun Notches
Working Stiffs
Garlic Torch
Dog Crouch
Menbrain
Membrane
Ein Zwei Drei
Fake German Soldier
Wet Tissue
Tissue Paper Pants
Tough Stain
Adam and Evil
Closed Loophole
Wait For It
Fiscal Cliff and the Cliffhangers
Repu
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1211115
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Hardly a soul could pin him for creating the vehemence that found a streamule to her pen if she wrote in cursive or a fanjet to her keyboard if she typed quickly and satisfyingly in print, employing eight fingers and two thumbs—
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121100
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They shake, shake, while mouths say the words.
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1211106
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121153
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Soft rain, small rain, steady rain—
what the shrubs and tangled
young red oak tree need—
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121110
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We creep the hill, flat on our bellies through yellowed grass and stone, black dirt grimed on our bright faces like powdered war paint. We are sitting ducks as we approach, out in the open like this but Cobb believes no one will be watching this side; it
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121194
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Hilda Raz lost a daughter. Her son gained a persona, backed by biological components. I was impressed by his male-pattern baldness. A biological genius. And yet, I was reduced and in the elevator mentioned crying about it.
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121177
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It's true. I like to walk on the ceiling. But please. Don't hold it against me. The ceiling is cold. Nobody lives there. Just a spider. A curious arachnid. She lets herself down sometimes. If I'm on the bed, trying to sleep, staring at the ceiling, watching her…
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121100
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At the week's end, memories may come to you Of weekends same as those just gone before, That fade away from seeing as a tide's grey flue, That vanishes once travelled to a shifting shore: Still, hope you'll know a girl for an hour anew, One who fades…
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121100
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We're all just meat and atoms who can no more sense into the great beyond than a horse can fly a plane.
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121110
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I found Mathew face down, cold and ridged like a plastic doll. I had overslept because he never cried—never told me he was hungry. Rodney had to peel my arms from around my son so the paramedics could take him in a blaze of flashing red and white lights.…
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121022
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Last night I met a man from the same littleshithole townthat you are fromand I kissed him in the mouth to find out if he tasted like coallike you do.While he slept, I tried to pinpoint on a map I drew on his back exactly how far apart you might have been:how many years…
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1210106
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Mothers and sons and war, an old story...
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121000
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Cody had a face, a still and shivering dark basement of a face, one with a negative intake that seemed like it was leaning at a downward angle, as if falling off of itself, or committing suicide, jumping off the edge of the world and leaving behind the su
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121000
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Late last night down at Jim's Saloon
Everyone expected that the last balloon
Would go Boom! The one they all saw coming
And Lady Liberty would send the bad guys running
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121051
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Molly stared at the woman behind the desk with a headset attached to her head, and sighed.
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121032
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Palinode: A poem written to retract something said in a prior poem.
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121055
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I was supposed to write a history of the old world and expose the selfish ones who use their best kept love for evil against the good little witches of childhood, but it made no sense to me to go after them in that obvious a way. They…
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121000
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We didn't know what what we were reading meant. We didn't even know if we were reading it right. In fact, we suspected that we probably were not.
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121000
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Everything I write is gold, he mused. My words spill onto the page like ambrosia, nectar of the gods, filling an empty vessel with immortal life.
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121021
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121000
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"Excuse me, ma'am? You wanted the mayonnaise on the side, right?"No one ever called her ma'am again.
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121033
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At night, I watch TV shows with fictional characters who lead my life.
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120921
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There it it again, that noise. That low hum that I know so well now, spinning, gaining momentum in my head, like a cyclist in a velodrome, until its steadiness and roundness becomes sharp, painful, cutting like glass.
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120932
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Let's put a cork in this drain.
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120933
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I saw a big dog
By the side of the road
I saw a small deer
By the side of the road
A little maroon water in a glass
As I was driving home
Under darkness
With the wind that was under a rose
New blood will fill the earth
And we must lo
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