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Lynn Freed reads from her collection, The Curse of the Appropriate Man.

I arrived that evening barefoot and swathed in a sort of striped toga.

If you’re not having fun, then there isn’t a big impetus to stay alive.

The knife in my mother’s hand flakes into penny-stained rust.

“What would Toby do?” is a question that often appears in my mind.

Even Medusa was beautiful once, before the sea, snakes, stone. Any chimera is regal if you turn a certain way. Even Medusa was beautiful.

She unhooks the sapphire pendant from its stand. Slips it into her pocket.

How many gods do you believe in? How many good men?

It is a city of sea, sun, boulevards, strolling beauties, life-altering food.

Poets need to be
in constant touch with the extremes of feeling.

Jayne Anne Phillips

Iherde ich holde grete tale, an owle and one niyhtingale.

He thought of the love that had filled the great central chamber of his life.

She did something few girls had ever done with him. She laughed.

you here and these words also here meeting in your shared beauty

Let us stifle under mud and affirm it is fitting and delicious to lose everything.

We’d open our mouths and sink, trying to make an ocean of ourselves.

A world of adventure awaited, a world of beautiful, available women.

We would just roll down the old biology road like all the other suckers.

There’s this cool magazine online. They let people read it for free.

As soon as her grandparents left, BLAM, the dance in her died.

My first suicidal ideations occurred to me when I was ten, eleven, twelve.

Here I am, king of the gods, making a fool of myself just to get under your gown.

James Salter

James Salter