1438 10 8
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Half-pint Ball canning jars, each labeled in earnest capital letters, took up a whole wall of Teeny’s bedroom. Inside each jar was air she had collected from some place important to her life.
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920 3 1
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I dreamed I might one day become the numero uno tango singer in Boston.
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1338 5 2
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Yesterday morning I sank to the depths of hell and barely crawled out in time. There is no answer except possibly death that will find me relief from his distant presence. I am free but yet I am not and I slowly sink into a hollow world where nothing hurt
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815 2 0
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God love him, she used to say. you never noticed it much at the time because it is just something like a habit. a benevolent habit. around through the years and decades she went like that. God love him, she used to say, if she saw someone resting peacefully, of if…
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1535 5 3
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“No names,” she said. “I am the mysterious woman, and you are the handsome stranger.”
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938 13 5
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Pine nerves spike and row.
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998 9 6
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I'm mucked now for sure. No one's going to discover my difficult poems in a locked away desk drawer somewhere after the dying fact. I remember how it feels to be knocked out by someone standing next to me in a simple white dress. This…
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1044 1 0
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at the front of the bus/ sways a white-veiled woman:/ gnarled hands upon/ a bag of palms,
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1186 9 8
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Over his usual ham sandwich and skim milk for lunch Uncle Waldo used to always say, “Going out in the dead of night without a flashlight is dangerous.” But I knew what I was doing. After dark, I'd slip out and sneaker on down the path to take a dip in a…
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1109 0 1
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Ben followed Jean-Claude’s white Fiat. Every time Ben shifted gears, he was reminded of Arris’s punch.
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878 2 2
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We’re safe as houses/
and unmoved. We grow/
accustomed to the sound
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46 1 0
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Peter had recently cracked his tooth chewing ice. It was the top left molar, not the far back one, but the one just in front of that. His dental insurance covered most of the extraction but none of the implant. An artificial tooth was considered cosmetic, and they…
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1284 1 1
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of Jim Beam when I was maybe fifteen. Or anyway old enough to admire the lesson.
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1309 5 5
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You will never know how much it hurts
When someone else touches your face.
But I also know how much you count on others
To pull the slivers out of your heart.
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1019 2 0
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Angelo stood to the side and lit a cigarette.
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931 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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105 10 6
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877 0 0
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Monday MorningI wake slowly. My breath still escapes me. He's asleep on the sofa, legs hanging, hand hanging, lips hanging, a river of saliva somewhere. He tries to be the one that's okay when I'm not, but really he's just as bloody as I am. I wait til he starts to…
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1184 2 1
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Lucy shrugs into the corner of the train's seat. She envelopes her IPod in both hands as if she's praying or holding a conch shell: safe, secure like when she visited a Morcombe beach in the school holidays. The only giveaway's the white headphone cord.
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1045 2 3
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I, Seer of the Stars, Cartographer of the Cosmos, / measure my mass, and to whom do I owe this woe...
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277 8 4
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It’s just a joke, give them a poke, electric jigger in the hand
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65 1 0
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“Now let's just start again, real slowly, and from the very beginning,” the taller darker investigator leaned across the desk and spoke directly to the young male bank teller, face-to-face, “you say that she was attractive then — this,…
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879 8 7
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and I revel in the fact. There are other facts at work and play, but I'm hanging out with this one because it is my day off and I'm listening to music and writing poems. I like the bright appearance coming from the bedroom…
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1563 7 6
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His eyes drift over the body of every
woman who enters Starbucks, even though
he’s old enough to be their father or grandfather,
still his eyes are aware of every shape passing by,
refusing to let go, and die.
Maybe they’re speaking Polish or
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1266 11 4
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Sunset swoony love waves
crash over me and I forget why
I didn’t say yes sooner
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1037 6 3
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in that time people had gone away and i waited in the inside and looked out on balconies. the ending of the dusk was coming and the details of the railings and brick, the tree branches holding purple plums, the stacked railway ties and a thousand other details became…
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111 7 3
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953 0 0
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Would you take a job living in a computer? What if you had to?
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259 4 4
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I like to think of Bukowski and meknocking back beers in some downtown LA bar, Buk telling me some tale of ordinary madness (“Man, you shoulda seen the big old ass on her, I loved to hang onto it while we fucked.”) as I stare, nodding, at…
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879 0 0
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Sunday Night She wasn't hungry, hadn't eaten for days, wouldn't even touch the food I took time off my fuckin' schedule to bring her myself. I walked through puddles of dirt and dog shit, I did. By the time she opened the door after four knocks, I was drenched,…
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