1459 26 14
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After each piece cancelled the other
the generals folded up their checkerboards,
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1362 21 14
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1698 24 13
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Later I take his hand, and I lead him up the stairs. I want to show him something, I say.
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1736 15 14
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I see those shoes and the status they confer, and I know what they cost.
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827 14 15
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the making by taking away
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1596 16 15
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lost in a taxi cab, 4:30 am
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1919 18 13
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Instead of julienning the fava beans you could, instead, slip your linen shirt off your pink shoulders and hang it on a tree branch like a white flag yelling “I don’t want to fight anymore, goddamit, this aftenoon is beautiful.”
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1817 17 15
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What you see us doing here is not so much, andall we are not being there isn't either. Our kissing mouths may not always be singing, but we are constantly praying for you, and for more rain or less rain, rivers as the situation warrants. Don't…
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1220 18 15
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When I first met Luther he was sitting on the sidewalk, his back pushed up against a vacant storefront wall, thumbing through the “help wanted” section of a few-days-old copy of our local paper and I was moved to offer him a couple of dollars for which he said,…
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1700 19 15
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Our sons do nothing but drink and roar
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1572 16 13
|
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1790 14 15
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A crone dressed in black pours liquid from a bottle onto the egg. Whiskey. Gasp! The egg cooks before our eyes!
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1391 17 15
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Sometimes he made us punch pillows. "Harder!" the shrink would yell.
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2175 17 14
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my foreign mouth embarrassed the teachers. my jumbled words gave people sad faces. so wrong these words of mine. even the mentally retarded girl would not talk to me. just looking at my garbled mouth made her slap herself. and my writing. oh no. my writin
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1523 16 15
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The dancer was a little chubby, but I didn't mind. It gave her more to shake.
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1939 16 13
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Confused, I paused and locked eyes with the girl who’d just bounced it with the long, dark hair. “I just saw you with it.”
She stared back at me. “Do you see it in my hands now?”
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2288 18 12
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She looked up, blinked. Fuck are you? I shook my head. Nobody you’ll remember, I said.
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1438 29 13
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Cinnamon and smoke
infuse the days that shorten,
chill, accelerate.
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1479 15 14
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Yet it was another thing to grow to become indispensable to someone without whose infirmities the helper could not exist. People in general had started to call that helpless requiring “codependency,” but to Althea that word did no good,
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1538 18 15
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We're not here for idle chit-chat, or ESPN, or fish tacos.
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1553 20 14
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In the bearded sun, I see a golden goat.
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2722 14 8
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We aren't designed for darkness. Something deep inside of us, something much older and deeper than us is telling us to move away, get to warm, because if we don’t, come winter we will die.
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1646 24 13
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1397 26 13
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2431 25 12
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Paid and laid, they leave.
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1673 18 14
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I peel off my shorts and tee-shirt, step out of my shoes, and crawl into bed. She wakes up then. "Oh, my goodness," she says.
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1756 26 13
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I greatly enjoyed imagining each wonton was one of my personal enemies and then biting it in half and pretending I could hear it screaming piteously as I chuckled and dragged out the chewing.
|
1698 19 14
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I'm sitting here listening to Nebraska and it's / breaking my heart
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806 19 14
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To whoever reads this next--Henry James makes my head hurt.
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1922 16 13
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1. Everyone disappears.2. Stars map themselves.3. The moon fills her bathtub over and over. You can't watch it for too long or you go mad, shouting, "Just get in, get in!"4. The ghosts of certain broken poets stand under apple trees and lean their hands on the…
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