2091 3 1
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There, at that cabin, she had first tasted the back of a hand in anger, the sting of a horsewhip, bone-deep fear and, finally, an unthinkable act of self defense.
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20901711
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I fired God today. He wasn't showing up for work, slept through meetings, wrote ambiguous memos and killed too many innocents. Things just weren't working out.
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2090118
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Erin Hoffmeyer Zulkoski. I was at work today, doodling on a piece of scrap paper. I often find myself writing my name, practicing my signature, for when I become famous. I have always written "Erin Zulkoski." Today, I wrote "Erin Hoffmeyer." This…
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20881517
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born to be mistreated by beasts in human shapes
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2088138
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I want nothing to do with anyone,
other than doing nothing with you.
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2088128
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Cousin Rudy pulled up a cod /
out of season /
we were rigged for haddock, /
it was dressed for the weather
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208853
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20871715
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Sometimes he made us punch pillows. "Harder!" the shrink would yell.
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2087168
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I didn't go to China, however. I would have gone there in debt wearing their clothing. I was afraid to owe even $4,000 (what I still owe) living overseas.
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2087119
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oh, sure i’m still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet/profit/fit trying to cut off my very own de/(con)instruction and all other sordid a•void•able & available /a-Babel-Trumpish towers of post & toastmodern doom/daze/haze
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208721
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The diner was half filled with the loose ends of humanity that stayed up until five in the morning. We picked a booth by the window. The light in the diner was a dingy yellow, and the seats were that lobster-red vinyl that could only have been installe
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2087115
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You aren’t easy to explain, you Americans.
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20871614
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There are simply no more words around me quite full enough yet to sort of cancel outthese more than emptied ones. I'm sorry. There might be some forever fields left ofcrowded purple flowers if you look hard enough but no mountain's majestyto…
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2087129
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1.Oh yes, I'm just kicking around in the leftover moon dust you could say I'm certainly not waiting around for your satellite feed anymore certainly never ever hoping to see if your free falling hair strands still look…
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208675
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The sea is transparent rubber, and peering down into it I recognize the shiny fish in suspended animation, their partially exploded bodies obscured by their own blood.
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208600
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It was days before Parker and I could even get up the nerve to look in each others' direction at the cafe. We kept trying to avoid the other's glance. But after a time things began to soften between us. I could sense it the day the tension began to eas
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2086103
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Her father stuffed years worth of stories into the phone, a sort of begging: how the new dog rode in the golf cart and retrieved lost Pinnacles; how the garage’s rent was too expensive; how the doctor gave him new pills and how he had lost weight and cu
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208501
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The teachers who get caught propositioning male students are always wholesome family women. This is why I have repeatedly called for regular round-ups of wholesome family women before another young man’s morals are corrupted.
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208585
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Your pajamas torture us.
When moist they uncomfortably cling. They have evil buttons, and they cause us to stumble on them in the dark.
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20852112
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She could live there forever, in that smokey memory...
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2084187
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the heat and energy it takes
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208481
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She is thinking about her baby, the one she loved for exactly one month before she lost her forever. Now, all the love for her baby is coiled in the pit of her stomach and it has fangs and venom, and it is leaking into her blood, her bones.
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2084145
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And on nights like those I conjure Martha's childhood, a little girl who could make the whole world fall in love with her, with those goddam big seashell eyes, enticing adults to fall into a blue-green sea that never ends, never promises survival.
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2083117
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The store was closing for good, and so I purchased a book of poems by Cavafy,
that poet of ruins and tombstones, and fragments from disintegration.
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20831415
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A crone dressed in black pours liquid from a bottle onto the egg. Whiskey. Gasp! The egg cooks before our eyes!
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208300
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The kitchen I snuck out of seventeen years before kept fading to black and white, with this layer of something between me and them.
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208342
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Though she is looking at me, I sense she is seeing someone else. Somewhere else. Maybe a long time ago. Her hair looks like cotton and a silk scarf is draped elegantly across her frail shoulders. Plum lipstick outlines lips almost vanished with age.
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2083147
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I cannot make love to a woman who looks like David Byrne.
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20831713
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I lean forward and take her two hands in mine. I look into her eyes. “It’s you and only you,” I say. She starts to cry.
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208387
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Whenever talk dies, or darkness gathers too closely around the breakfast table, everyone knows the list of ritual activities we can brightly suggest to skip the day forward.
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