930 4 3
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A novel is an idea that has
Survived many severe beatings
While a poem is a homely thing that was
Never even asked to the dance
Art Speak, however, is the art of
Systematically overstating and
Re-inventing the Obvious to the point of
Distr
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1201 9 4
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Later, when she said she'd had miscarriages, I should have put it all together.
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1246 8 3
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1759 7 3
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We walk in silence. We water our plants. We don’t eat as well as we should. We try to love. We try to forget.
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1371 4 4
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Kick your employer in the ass. Emotions are strange experiments in honesty.
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1334 4 4
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I considered kissing Christian. It wouldn’t be terrible. I mean, it might be terrible, but it wouldn’t be awful. His teeth were a little crooked but he didn’t smell or anything.
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1160 5 4
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It was noon and cloudless when I pulled over next to the icehouse, wedged in the X formed by two dirt roads.
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1355 6 3
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I had the smallest taste. Liquid heat, gifted from lips. One long moment spent lost in her warmth. Fleeting. I should have drunk more. Would she have relented to one more sip? One final taste? “Be careful,” she…
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1475 7 3
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“There are no inhibitions in here,” the postman shouted, gesturing at the dance floor with his Marlboro Light, the glowing tip aimed at a woman in a taut skirt. Leaning far forward, her hands nearly touching the plywood floor, she planted her feet and beg
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1055 6 3
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You may want to pretend to leave once or twice, peeking in through a window from a darkened room, to see how they interact. Never leave a new poet unattended with the pack until you’ve determined that the new arrival has learned to fit in with the other w
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1645 3 4
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“Do you think she paints?”
“Her face, a little, But don’t you find her kind of bony?”
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1512 8 4
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Cleaning the dust bunnies from under our lives, Zin says she wants to move to the country, maybe someplace as big as Texas. She claims that lately she's having trouble breathing between bricks or talking to hot chestnut vendors with rubber faces. It's giving her nightmares…
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735 4 3
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1323 4 4
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The figure eight will fall on its side. Become infinity.
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1109 10 3
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They're haunting me with every spotting. They're convincing me they'd be the unexpected blessing. They're confusing me when I look at my already-children, taking on the shape of this one's face, that one's gestures. We've been…
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1174 6 3
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...my books have lots of swear words. So there's that.
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634 4 3
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in the chicken house
this morning. The second
one this week. I carry the stiff hen
out to the back pasture
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1226 4 4
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My flash kept going off. The museum officials are strict about such matters. Sans flash! Sans flash, Monsieur!
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854 9 3
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Can anyone remember what the Great American dream was?
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1298 3 4
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When it was sticky cool at night, he'd pull her hair up off her neck and spin it like a pinwheel. “You could be anything," he would say. “You could be a preschool teacher.” She waited for him to add, “For dragons! For wallabees! For…
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1346 9 3
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The headlines were my source of information and contact. Four Soldiers Killed in Baghdad read one. Seven Ambushed in Fallujah. I’d read them, look for his name, and maybe clip it out. It put me there; put me in touch with him.
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958 5 4
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with a finger I will (let you) know. If you mean even just one given look at the moon I will know that, too. If you peel off one lonely star and put that shining shell in your watch pocket for later or to skip across your sad …
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1177 4 4
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“Kids okay?” I didn’t mean anything by it–it would have been innocent small talk any other time–but he took up the suggestion.
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795 6 3
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It doesn’t shuffle, wrapped in cotton,/
hungering for love and tana leaves.
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7644 10 2
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And as he looked at the departing pink cushion in his rear-view mirror (shaped like a canoe without the paddles), the latest big question popped into his mind like a hot slice of buttered brown bread from his shiny, metallic stainless steel toaster –
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1626 7 4
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Every Friday night she gets liberated at The Haymarket Square doing a bunny hop or a do si do with ex-members of The Saint Augustine Women's Choir. She remembers how as kids, shy or awkward in dresses, their voices formed the harmony, the flight of something V-shaped…
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125 4 4
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524 4 3
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Rumors stranger than usual were circulating in Moskva. Naturally, they could not be confirmed, but they were making the rounds so thickly that they began spilling out of the capital.
“Putin has become a superman!”
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1474 4 4
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The signal sets the faint young boys into motion
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1193 4 4
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Jenny was certain nobody saw her when she took the slinky shirt from her father's store. It was blue with buttons shaped like cherries, the fabric light as air. She balled it up in her hand. Her father owned a chain of boutiques called Body Electric. The racks were…
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