1214 1 1
|
It was two days to town. His horse could only go one.
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1137 2 0
|
Before Plasma screen TV Futon Underwear (brief style) piled on kitchen chair Unopened mail from funeral parlour Water in the sink coloured orange with grease Desktop computer (flying toasters screen saver) Cigarette butts floating…
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1372 1 1
|
I am in the hallway, but I don’t sense it. That is to say: I don’t feel my body. I am like a phantom, a limbless entity floating, flailing.
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1414 4 0
|
Children, afraid of dogs cried. There was uproar of melee. Children strained at their leashes to get away.
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1280 3 0
|
I see ghosts. They accost me in their sleep. Hundreds of them. When I wake up (after a long night of half-waking), I think, What wold ghosts want with me? I have nothing for them. But at night they're there again, watching, tapping my shoulder as I lay awake. Sometime…
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1168 4 0
|
Koo ate the sad, bitter pills just so she wouldn’t have to try and make small talk about La Donna’s deformed, retarded kid.
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46 1 0
|
Peter had recently cracked his tooth chewing ice. It was the top left molar, not the far back one, but the one just in front of that. His dental insurance covered most of the extraction but none of the implant. An artificial tooth was considered cosmetic, and they…
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1169 2 0
|
Ruth carries always a small bottle of nitroglycerin; and tissues, wads of tissues; two Tums (for calcium, she tells me)...
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1032 1 0
|
You are my intergalactic princess / The most beautiful in twelve systems
|
1138 1 1
|
No, I’m not at the junior high bus stop. I’m at the dining room table with my parents.
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1317 2 0
|
Well, I turn the car off, the song turns off, I gather all of my stuff, turn off my lights, inevitably drop something as I’m getting out of the car, shut the door, lock the car, fumble for my house key, walk up the stairs, unlock the front door, set my
|
1504 0 1
|
They drifted for months, locked between the vast merciless blue and the withering sun. Their faces blistered and their minds bleached and weary. They conspired in the shadows, drew plans in the sawdust, they grew confident and…
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1208 1 1
|
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892 4 0
|
Why is this woman smiling?
Because she’s the Real Mona Lisa,
that’s why
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1040 2 0
|
As we follow the trail and things snap beneath our feet, I tell myself that the snapped things take pleasure, find purpose even, in the sounds they make with my soles.
|
893 2 0
|
feathered flightless freak of nature
|
1091 3 0
|
Just because I’m suicidal doesn’t mean I don’t care about whacking my head on some service railing ten stories down. The fact that I’m going to jump doesn’t lessen my fear of propellers or a broken back.
|
623 4 0
|
The dead turkey’s wife, or lover
Watching over his recent roadkilled carcass
Seeming to be mourning her loss
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1029 3 0
|
Walking east, he pauses,
Picks a cassava,
Cleaves the melon in two;
He tears juicy chunks
Of flesh to cleanse the blade.
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891 1 1
|
Like Smart’s cat Jeoffrey,
he’s a mixture of gravity and waggery.
|
1048 2 0
|
Emma held her arm up to John’s eyes. He looked, nodded. “My burns are on the inside,” he told her. “I’ll never show you.”
|
1416 3 0
|
His mouth went dry, but he managed to say, coolly, “Just how would you like me to do that, Sandra?”
|
1011 1 0
|
It is your music that makes me want to crack open my ribcage and rip out my heart as it still beats, to cauterize my carotids, and shove the mechanical insides of a clock into my thoracic cavity.
|
1767 2 0
|
I was afraid of needles and ponds of water and I was transfixed by both.
|
2673 2 0
|
Roger's assigned route had him picking up medical waste at most of the plastic surgery offices in town. He smelled it on his skin by the end of the day. The plastic surgery places were less of a hassle than the hospital and worlds away from the free c
|
489 2 0
|
A Being of Aether, who having appeared to me one morning, instructed me in the geometry of thorns. She seemed to be semi-infinite as her often melodious speaking voice was unimaginable in one direction and limited in another.
|
1138 4 0
|
Bonnie envied all of those people who instantly forgot their horrible traumas: Jessica Lynch, the Central Park jogger. Their own brains rescued them. Bonnie's brain was not so generous.
|
1184 3 0
|
white-gray mounds persist
|
1410 2 0
|
‘Just get out of bed,’ I reply. ‘It looks like the fairies have been at your head. You should turn your clothes inside out. Put out a biscuit. Ring a bell. Buy a rooster; or a recording of it crowing. It will keep the sprites at bay.
|
1243 0 0
|
Yes, my old uncle liked roses. Grew them. He had a way of smelling a rose—after he smelled a rose, you are surprised the rose is still there.
|