1094 3 3
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. . . we agree that formal standards for identifying literary merit exist and are capable of being discerned, not merely of being ascribed. —but is this itself true?
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1309 5 2
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Roy Carver owned a big tire retreading outfit over on the Mississippi.
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1134 3 3
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had I gotten home without knowing it? well . . .
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524 3 2
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December scent
rains coming down
sodden leaves underfoot
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1000 4 3
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This grey is going to kill me
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1713 2 3
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Follow me around a bit.
Let me walk you through the rooms, structures, and clouds of my being that reveal junk drawers of "collectibles."
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912 3 3
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sometimes i have to be in the other room
just so i can breathe easy away from you.
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1095 4 2
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whatever weaknesses you displayed//
as empathetic human fellow traveler,/
your command of English survives you,//
on into the last echoes of the human/
once we’re gone.
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1277 4 3
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Last night, in a tavern called Wits End, we dropped quarters into a console, sized and shaped like an old TV.
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1758 6 2
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No, she hated the vain, overweight, pathetic, glass-of-merlot-a-day, SUV piloting, Carmen-cell-phone-ring-toned, housewives and consumer sluts that charged through the store like starving hyenas through the fallen, decaying, putrid, corpses of a plague-ri
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981 5 1
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He also looked at the tv with a detachment he sensed was dangerous and the sensation scared him so he ran into the kitchen and felt ashamed alone in the hot room and trembled.
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1155 4 3
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I killed him. I know you probably don't believe me, but it was an accident. I'll bet everyone in this room knows Dennis Gauda.... or should I say knew him? He was District Governor a while back. He also won quite a few speech contests. Yes... he's competition,…
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1226 3 3
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It is only seven-thirty but the night is full, gloom seizing Highway 66. There is a carcass on the road, maybe a human, slumped next to an empty ice cream truck. Several stars hang up in the East, drunken constellations scrambling to find meaning.
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1112 3 3
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“We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
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990 2 3
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Our friend, M. Dieu-Juste partnered in a used car business with a Vietnamese mechanic, Mr. Tran. Cars however, were not their only venture.
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1438 1 3
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"Carl, do you think we can fit all of our furniture into that red house?" Jeanne asks. She wonders how easily you could burn a red house down, if a claw foot tub will melt or be left standing in a field of black grass. He reaches for her hair, the dizzy smell…
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732 4 2
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We were fleeing hurricane Katrina. We stopped somewhere in Texas at a roadside diner, but found a sign that said it was closed. We were so hungry. All of a sudden as we sat there in our car, the shop's owner knocked on the window and asked what he could g
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1255 5 1
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Some things are meant to be repeated
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724 5 2
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Wake me up on payday
Don’t throw in the towel
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1187 6 2
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Passing by PallanteumOr ‘Dido's Song' Form: Double Sestina, iambic pentameter, rhymed Who knows of hell, knows less of paradise? I've known them both, when vanquished in your eyes, When draws the kelp where lost men had their graves Below…
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973 3 1
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The president is truculent today.
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1577 4 2
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I nicked this from a 12-year-old famine victim living under a bridge in Disneyland.
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794 3 4
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“Just how many different bipeds try to hide their nakedness?” “Only one. And that'd be us, idiot.”, Twinkle responded. “Then, why don't we mind showing certain parts of our bodies?”, she then asked. Twinkle could see it was going to be…
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1287 3 3
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Mike poured vermouth over his Campari and ice. “Gotta say, you have the most amazing view up here.” “Thanks. It's great when I'm washing dishes.” “Yeah, and the view in your front room isn't bad either. This cocktail …
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1269 3 3
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At least ten people have been shot by their dogs since 2004, usually in hunting accidents. (AARP Bulletin, January February 2016)If somebody phones you claiming to be with the IRS, it's a scam. The real IRS will only open communications with a taxpayer via the U.S.…
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1385 1 1
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From above we see the trampled grass circling the house. Trampled grass from where half starved alligators circled the house, hissing and issuing low moans. Half starved alligators deranged by the red skies circled the house in the late August of the last year. Beginning in…
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904 6 3
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You don't deserve this poem and I don't deserve to write it. Whatever time we have left is way better spent sitting in a sunny garden with a good interesting book and with a beautiful golden delicious apple to bite into. But…
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1189 5 2
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We talk of his time in the jungle.
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1219 6 2
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After sex he would get on his old refurbished upright piano and always play that same song. We came to know it as the After-Sex Song.
It was really quite lovely, and touching. I think it made us all feel better around that building. Yeah, I remember t
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1089 3 3
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As she slunk to her topless Mercedes
sparkling curbside, wax job hand rubbed
in Hamburg, testosterone heads turned
wishing similar treatment.
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