1248 0 0
|
Simon never looked ethereal. I’d expect someone who grew up seeing ghosts to dress in black every day. I’d expect him to be gaunt and to chain-smoke foreign cigarettes, Gauloises maybe. The kind wrapped in black paper. Strong. Two puffs and you’ve got thr
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696 2 0
|
I remember another one night stand in NYC with a girl named Marilyn. We’d met up at Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference in Vermont. It was the Summer of Love, and a number of us student writers were planning a trip out to San Francisco to participate in that f
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1282 5 2
|
I considered explaining that the universe is still evolving and changing, but the look on her face said GENESIS ONE.
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809 6 5
|
It was the early 80's My students carried / guns.
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1126 7 2
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My vagina invites you to a party
Whenever your time frees up
Or now,
Now would be better
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961 4 2
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I sense that I may have won a few hearts and minds with my stirring peroration. "Can I get anybody a Republican Party beer koozie to take home?"
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1360 4 4
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She has a mercenary way of doing business and she's pretty shrewd. I make her stand outside to smoke her cigarette. I stay inside watching her stance as she violently tugs at the barrel, tearing every ounce of smoke out of it, then stamping it out as I wo
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1421 15 11
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They say, we have hangnails.
I say, I have a bruised leg.
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1208 10 5
|
Walter met Danial at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They didn't have much in common at first, other than AA, with Walter on the recovery side of treatment and Danial reluctantly just beginning.
|
1150 23 11
|
Every Monday you brought your Sunday finest to the bus stop...
|
1166 9 6
|
I held her hand through two divorces, I warned her that gorgeous Geoffrey was homosexual when she was oblivious, and I fed her children when she was off at rehab (four times before it 'took').
|
873 0 0
|
Rains came again and wore away at their flesh, revealing bone as white and sharp as sharks’ teeth.
|
947 1 0
|
Snap!
Dylan’s arms flung forward as the rod bent toward the ocean. “Holy God! What did I snag?
|
1140 13 7
|
I miss Mother gentling the small of my back. She has forgotten me. Her little girl. Whose thumb she fussed over when a rose thorn scratched it and blood spilled like a secret. Whose smile she said was her morning sunshine, whose hug was incense. I yearn for her lips…
|
1188 5 2
|
“You done done sumpin’,” the old man guessed, “Sumpin’ bad...”
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686 3 0
|
There was one girl from Ireland, with her thick Irish brogue, who came into my bedroom early on the morning before my final exam for my Master’s degree in the writing program at U.C Irvine. She knew I was so nervous about taking the exam that I hadn’t sle
|
1559 1 0
|
I was getting ready to eat a thick peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich when a blue spider pushed up a corner of the bread from the inside and said, "Don't chomp, don't chew! We're in here, we're having a good time, and we don't feel like being eaten.
|
1449 2 1
|
Standing hard at the windowCold clouds move, slowBlue horizon in the distance—It's just a slice of blue.All this beautyI miss it in the bitterness.I'm consumed by the missingThe emptinessThe unfairnessAlways some unfairness cropping upand capturing joy.Glancing high…
|
989 3 1
|
Wall talks to wall. One has a clock, the other a window, the third a cupboard with bandages etcetera. The fourth a door that opens and closes a thousand times a day.Chair is across from chair. Occasionally the one looking for care picks the wrong one to sit in, and there is…
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975 1 2
|
|
942 1 1
|
I pulled at her shirt like a slot machine.
|
1753 10 6
|
Grief is to have given freely too unfreely. Grief is to have given one year too many. Wicked is to have wanted it to be given away that way. Wicked is to Sam as duty is to Mother. Sam’s wife is to his friend’s wife as one Mercedes to another.
|
782 1 0
|
In suburban Jeddah magnificent houses on every corner of the avenues are surrounded by high walls rising up from just inside the roadside curb to much beyond taller than a man.
|
973 2 2
|
The boy buckled in and told his mom, “No mommy, I can do it myself”
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503 2 0
|
Coyotes are like the French Resistance in Casablanca. If you kill them, hundreds--thousands!--rise to take their place.
|
762 0 0
|
One time in Laguna Beach I remember sleeping with a girl I met at this café, the Jolly Roger, when we went back to my apartment and had unprotected sex. She said she was on the pill, but you never know. It was just that one time, and she did seem desperat
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1616 16 9
|
The Strongman used to weep alone in hissingle dusty tent at night, all of uscould hear him, sobbing, thinking about theone incredible time in his mostlymiserable life he accidentallybrushed his thick arm…
|
1215 11 6
|
Today’s new YouTube kitten;
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839 3 0
|
She turned on the television. The newscaster was her husband. She changed the channel. Her husband interviewing her husband. She changed the channel. A baseball game. Her husband pitched to her husband who popped a fly ball which was caught by her husband
|
797 1 1
|
Trenches coated with man-gruel laced the earth.
|