Alphabetical stories

A life in books

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Forget Ulysses, life itself is a stream of consciousness if you ever have time to get out of the stream and take a look at it. And there’s nothing that gets you out of the stream like a short sharp shock.

A 90's Tune.

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The heat was different in the 90's Car rides played all the right tunes, and early, Saturday mornings echoed explosions of excitement, and neighborly visits Apartments; one beige body; filled our LA slum, street Sprinklers colored the hot…

A Babe in the Mirror and Another in the Woods

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“Would you look at that one!” my father said. “Who did she know?” my mother asked. “Who did she blow?” my father said loudly, and burst out laughing. I laughed too, although I didn't know why. My mother shot him one

A Bad Year

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It's been a bad year, People dying. Some too close to home, Some too far away. I cry down to you, In your casket, and think you might sit up. You were not sick You went in just a moment, Looking stunning and alive. Not…

A Band of Feline Brothers

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I am not covetous for catnip, Nor care where I sleep at night. It irks me not who takes my Favorite chair, or swats me off a table.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. Manet

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The mystery is in the barmaid's impersonal stare It's all there. Recognizable the bottles of Bass Ale and Crème de Menthe. Glazed oranges piled in a bowl Two roses in a small clear glass of water A wide gold bracelet on her arm, halfway up from

A Bar In Time

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Nights like this don’t happen often, nights when I wander the streets of an unknown village, dark and quiet streets that offer little in the way of diversion.

A Bead Was Lost

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A Bear Story

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In the spring, my father would dress for class in a bear costume and chase students around campus.

A Beautiful Ancient Ghostly Passionate Spirit of the Stars

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Fabio has a soul of passion. A beautiful soul of passion. His passionate soul was so beautiful the ancient stars shone upon him and made him look like ghosts at night.

A Beggar's Welcome

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. . . it's all we ever want -- the holding.

A Bite-Sized Piece

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But conversation, like music, is measured in beats, and he waits for more than one, and loses the moment.

A Bitter And Unseasoned Business Attorney Makes His Case That "Crazy Heart" Is The Perfectly Nasty Ending

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In closing, Your Honor:After the interview Bad Blake, a/k/a "Otis" takes "Miss" Jane Craddock back to his hotel, ties her up, and gives her a Cleveland Steamer. For reference, please refer to my Brief, Exhibit A, showing a thespian named Ronald Jeremy…

A Black Cat

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And then, and then, and then! After all that, this. After all that bullshit with her Dad, the Associate Principal, the idiotic counselor, and that psychotic police officer, after all that, this: a dead black cat. Blocking her path! Right in the middle of the street! …

A Black Night

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The hairs on my arm lift with the breeze; a haunting breath from the open window carrying night-scented stock from the black-shrouded garden.

A Blow to the Possible

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Tombstones are only granite symbols of a man’s life, Gus thought as he changed lanes. Children, they were the ultimate epitaph.

A Blowhard Drops By

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So, I say, what is the answer? The answer to what? You know. The song by Bob Dylan. The answer is blowing in the wind. You’re the wind. So what’s the answer?

A Body Divided, 1

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A Body Divided: Memoir 1 When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it broug

A Body Divided, 1

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"Polio?" people wondered. They asked: "Is that contagious?" Nobody knew. It was 1953. The epidemic raged on. Children in some towns were being made to stay indoors during the polio season for fear that the disease was airborne. It was putting an unnatura

A Body Divided, 2

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I came down with polio on September 15, 1953, a mild, smoky day drawing close to autumn outside of Chicago — which also happened to be the exact date of my parents' twenty-first wedding anniversary. Only six months later the Salk vaccine was already b

A Body Divided, 3

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A group of nuns arrived in the middle of my first night at Hinsdale Hospital. I guess I must have dozed off when this odd noise, like curtains being moved, woke me up. At first I couldn't make out what that rustling sound was in the hallway outside my doo

A Body Divided, 4

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After surviving the first night in the hospital, I was put into a shared room to save on expenses, and to make room for the deluge of new cases that were coming in, and that was when I made friends with my roommate, Tommy. He was a boy about the sam

A Body Divided, 5

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Physical therapy was on the agenda every morning, first thing. A nurse would come to my room from the basement floor where they did physical therapy. She'd wrap me in a blanket and put me into a wheelchair, even though it was obvious I didn't need one to

A Body Divided, 6

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When I finally went back to school in the fourth grade, after coming down with polio, my classmates were very welcoming, though I couldn't go outside and run around like them yet at recess or lunch time. That would come, just not right away. But it was th

A Body of Water Invites All Things

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My resistance sublimates. There is a long instant of absolute relinquishment, in which I imagine droplets of water plinking into my lungs in a slow, musical fashion, like icicles melting in a perfect cave.

A Body Unable

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Once again there's too much to handle and no space to process

A Borrowed Barrow

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It was a battered, creaky, rickety old thing, this wheelbarrow. It had two wooden handles with cracks running through the wood, a fat rubber wheel and a deep tray encrusted with the mud and plaster and grout that it had transported through decades of heavy use. Based on…

A Bowl of Soup

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Bury my wounded ego Mr Sitting Bull.Keep me from committing suicide Ernest Hemingway.Take me for a ride above the clouds Christopher Reeve.Fly me to the moon Frank Sinatra.Invite me out to dinner Marlon Brando.Give me immunity from Hollywood John Cassavetes.Keep me from…

A Boy

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You said it was easier when you were ten and could play Risk with a girl and it was a game, not foreplay.

A Boy and His Tire

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**I think Bridgestone Tire borrowed this story for a commercial. Maybe not, see video and decide.**