1698 2 4
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We got our holes in our hearts bundled onto soft wrapping cloth just like the gentleman on TV said; with smiles we set out towards our matching end of the same old stories. That's just the way…
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156344
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My father's cousin is Salem the Dead.
Famed, an infant Lazarus of Libya,
he was brought lifeless from the womb,
yet awoke to the chill of a mortuary slab.
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177343
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When I was a kid, I was terrified of dying in a bombing,
which is strange, really, because I lived in Long Island,
which has relatively few bombings to speak of.
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261973
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Construct my eulogy with dialogue snippets culled from old Brat Pack movies and deliver them with a straight face.
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79643
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From inside the baking hot car we watched our father, nervous in his face mask and gloves, step through the wooden gate into grandma's front garden. She was waiting for him, thin and lonely behind the frilled lace curtain. She held the iPad in her left hand, and she…
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130753
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Somewhere between the bleating of sheep
And the laying of eggs
Comes the licking of frosting
And the eating of the cake
We’re not young enough
To know everything anymore
And you may think there’s no rush
But I know this
There’s a limit t
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178563
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“3.9 million dollars,” she whispered to the window.
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173753
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He was corporate then, young, his wife gorgeous, the collar flipped up on his twill overcoat, a lit cigarette in one hand, the other around his wife’s waist. They stood outside. It looked chilly. She wore a hat. He looked bulletproof.
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206663
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Danny said that you like him now. He smiled like it was the best news that he could give me, but his eyes dared me. …
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137653
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A friend has been shopping an opera around without success. It's about Arthur Inman, a hypochondriac who hired people to talk to and, in some cases, have sex with him.
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133443
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109854
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Fat, religious, full of himself,
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219193
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The year I lick so much windowpane off stamps I have to use Elmer's glue to back the twenty-center for a postcard cash request to my mother, that I am alive note at the end of term, is the year of all the "wine" parties.
"Wine" is what we put down
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156892
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Dear Sir/ Madam I wish to apply for the position you advertised in the Daily Sun. Although my expertise is in self-obliteration and self-worth (or lack of), and my work mainly in disappointment, I do have much experience in failure, which this letter will…
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129863
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Can we meet in the desert,
I will stand with a cactus flower clenched
between my teeth and balance en pointe.
I will tame snakes and find your serpent
tongue with my eyes closed.
I will usher in the clouds, when it grows hot,
and, should you becom
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145712
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she goes jogging with the feet of an angel the sound of crunching leaves like wrapping paper torn open to reveal an expensive doll and the light in her mother's eyes.
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179342
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when the sun goes down alone
vice is forgotten in the night wind
your lover's voice
on the phone
held fast in the balance
of gravity and momentum
overcoming inanimate objects
and the unknown
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153654
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I had the idea for a pageant for my obedience school at spring graduation
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131572
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If I should stumble into cheerfulness/
remind me of all the business models
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147154
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Swatches of Chinese silk in vivid red and lavender fly through the air. My granddaughter in her mid-thirties reaches for the cloth. I see in her mirror a shape forming; a slim, gray haired woman with a spring in her step. I pause to admire my reflection and pass over the…
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135553
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The questions piled up so high I thought I'd neverget through the door.The ease of alcohol, the incline of submission. Guttural sounds and spittle.Wipe down the morning afterwith a shower.Redress in last night's clothes.There's coffee if you want it.Sincerity too -no,…
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209263
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Your life is going to change—how many times was that prediction offered in one form or another during my wife’s pregnancy? Mothers often said it with a bliss-touched smile; fathers with a smirk that was both sardonic and conspiratorial, and a distinct
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139644
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“What. Is. That?” Sid asked, staring at the shaggy ball of fur sitting in the living room. Its tongue hung out of its mouth and its tail beat against the carpet.“This is Ranger,” his mom said. “I don't know what breed he is, but he's a sweetie…
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153162
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A year ago, my neighbor was a sexy graduate student in fashion design, sounds perhaps shabby, yet if it is, then we in the Middle West are all shabby. That girl's father graduated from high school with Bob Dylan in Hibbing, not entitling her to a child.
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104033
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Then there was the time I splurged, hoping a higher-priced phone might keep me from slamming it against the wall.
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216772
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Frank must have said "don't touch" about a million times over the course of the day
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136753
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Your face seems faint against the violet glades; The long winds echo once, then fail to start. Some wounding scent has stripped my hopes apart That dwelled to scent you. From the cavalcades The leaves make, bare at times since eve's sting fades To…
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195483
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"My boy Jake fell in with a bad crowd when he went to college," Coffelt says, shaking his head. "A bunch of accounting majors."
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157663
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My poems have appeared in four different publications; three have died shortly after they ran my stuff. Coincidence, or something more sinister?
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159663
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“I mean it, Hanna. I don't want you to.” But his leg felt carved away where her head had lain. One stupid thing jostling another for attention. He was afraid that if she touched him again, he'd have her on the ground.
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