994 17 14
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After Slick Daddy — aka Billy Ray Thompson — gave up driving his log truck and took up with playing and singing the blues full-time he was what you might call a hot property around the juke joints along Highway 61. The women didn't seem to mind…
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2295 14 9
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Can’t seem to put your clothes on today. You’re wandering in the little closet of your mind again, picking at socks that won’t stay up, shirts that are always too big -
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1302 18 14
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It is a small life, circumscribed/
by debt and income, age and infirmity./
The Hidden Hand thrusts its middle finger/
high.
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1921 20 12
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We’re friends and all but we’re just me and him friends, we’re not the kind of friends that you bring to supper.
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1271 16 14
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It was oddly quiet, and the air had a strangely urgent quality. The sun came out, and water on the leaves and branches turned oaks and aspens into Christmas trees.
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2162 11 9
|
Garage-sale variety olive-green corduroy, elbow patches, hems too short. His jacket pocket produced answers one afternoon like strips of paper from cracked fortune cookies.
|
1205 20 14
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I become the accumulation/
of appetites
|
1674 10 13
|
pluck me from the charred grate
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2082 20 13
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I love to lie when discovered. "I'm your new neighbor." "The landlord sent me." "I'm the ghost of the girl who died on the 11th floor." "I fell from the sky." I wear billowing white dresses and a wide-brimmed straw hat that throws my face into shadow. Peo
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1256 14 14
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I realize the kid is still smoking. Shocked, I tear the cigarette from his mouth, throw it to the earth, and grind it to death with the heel of my boot.
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1644 16 15
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• Don’t confuse the virtues of bananas with the virtues of banana bread
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1322 2 2
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The girl I sat next to said she had just looked up in time to see it, Randy, and it was quick thinking that you avoided it. Randy said he nearly missed it and commented on how Judy was the only one in the world who could discover plastic bubble paste, bab
|
1480 19 11
|
Emma pushes through the door of the corner market, aiming briskly for her car, keys in one hand, grocery bag in the other, shoulder bag slung. Best not to make eye contact with the loitering boozers and bikers from the bar next door. Double take. Can't…
|
1894 17 9
|
When Ryan isn’t around, those of us who know him lament that he peaked at 17, at Disney World.
|
3013 29 9
|
It was Christopher who got her thinking about the Jews again. He had left the same day they did, and so all were connected in her mind, as if together somehow. She read his letters half-wondering if he would mention them, wanting to know if the Jews were
|
1411 17 14
|
This morning I heard her downstairs trying to get away silently. I knew she would write a short goodbye note. I knew it would tell me her reason for leaving —she had to be free of my indifference. I dressed, finished my coffee, backed out of the driveway and went to…
|
1534 16 8
|
This latest married man who lives at a great distance has leeched her energy in that very particular way such men do. Next to him, I am as interesting as long division.
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1072 21 14
|
Let routine/
propel you through/
the day after/
the day before.
|
1971 14 13
|
The patient people who work with the insane are not my kind of people. They are too entertained by the oddness of the inmates and act with a superior sense. I, on the other hand, am odd myself, searching for adherents to my view. The inmates knew me as such and agreed…
|
1770 23 13
|
She stepped out of her panties. She spread her arms wide. "Take me!" she sang.
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887 14 13
|
|
1812 26 13
|
A response to Darryl Price's "Hello Is All There Is".
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2414 14 11
|
“When he felt most loved, he felt most _ burdened.” Stephen Dobyns When she loved him she burdened him. She knew he felt a pull but he always resisted it. They went to an old refurbished hotel in Venice and asked if they might see the rooms. …
|
1438 18 14
|
We are infused with fear and dread/
of the world we won’t engage/
except through flat screens and remotes,
|
1448 15 13
|
I am eternal/
as long as the power holds
|
1860 17 10
|
He kissed her tits and thought of art
|
2570 4 1
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I go to the seaand turn myself over in my hand like a shell: a hollow conch carried on the resonance of a song long past its singing. My heart is a well and this city, one that is forever in drought.
|
1346 20 14
|
the doomed, but splendid,
first year GT40.
|
1415 12 13
|
Papadad has one good eye. The other fell out during a rant and has since been replaced by a rifle scope, which he uses to scrutinise enemies.——Papadad is an authority on everything, even topics he has not researched. He expatiates on these at the dinner table,…
|
1313 15 12
|
(I'd appreciate some feedback on this very weird story.) A Frosted Mini Wheat walks in to a bar...
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