1967 23 7
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By morning it was over. I crawled farther out onto the ledge. The three year old was screaming like Donald Duck. Trains ran into the night. Several pigs entered the open window.
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1967 23 22
|
The painting was on loan from a gallery in Chicago. We stood there connecting the dots.
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1967 2 0
|
A cloud of light, white smoke floated out of the driver’s side window. Nate and Zach sat on the front bench seat, talked, and puffed away. “Breath in and say Mom is coming,” said Zach.
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1967 5 6
|
This violin of oneself, this rough strum of I, arc of wing over thick rib. This masturbatory chirping like the meat of God clenched in your teeth, an apostrophe giving aloneness possession over the inarticulate, a bridge between chords.
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1966 13 15
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1966 0 0
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Now coins used for wishing are not like coins used to purchase bread or carrots. Coins that have been invested with the magic of hopes and desires are special and have special properties. The difference between wishing coins and ordinary coins is very subtle.
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1966 2 0
|
the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright
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1966 20 13
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She offers the girl a seat, asks her to stay for a minute, but she can’t, she just came by to say hello, and don’t you like my new raincoat?
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1966 7 6
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...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.
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1966 6 1
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Cold water shocked Ernest's face. The evening with Gracie had his nerves hot and popping. She was his fifth date and the closest to his memory of Sadie in college so far. He looked up at himself in the bathroom mirror with his mouth agape. Redness flooded…
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1965 1 2
|
She can tell you seven things she doesn’t love about her face.
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1965 17 12
|
Conceptio culpa
Nasci pena
Labor vita
Necesse mori
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1965 11 8
|
often as i lie awake i wonder are you awake too?/
we never had any children, he said ruefully/
that summer i cried so much that robert called me soakie/
robert, dying: creating silence
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1964 8 3
|
"My boy Jake fell in with a bad crowd when he went to college," Coffelt says, shaking his head. "A bunch of accounting majors."
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1964 10 7
|
The first husband was young and lovely. He had a little nose and long fingers he used for things like planting begonias in my clay pot. I did not do flowers. So that was nice.
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1964 4 2
|
He stands straighter and walks toward the phone in the back, near the bathrooms. His wet sock slaps loudly against the tile floor. The buzz of conversation dims to whispers, barely audible above the roar of the espresso machine.
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1964 0 0
|
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
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1964 2 0
|
when women’s hair shrinks into tight curly balls and sits on top of their heads like scrunches of wool, blowing in the wind, hanging from the mouths of recently shot deer.
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1964 1 2
|
Sawyer walked toward the lone house with the sentinel trees.
Behind him there were no tracks in the snow.
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1964 2 1
|
The trail wound through oak trees and climbed up a hill. The sun was high and hot whenever we came out from the cover of the trees.
We stopped under a tree.
“OK old man,” Leda said. She came to me and kissed me. Then she was unbuttoning my pants and kne
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1964 4 3
|
I cannot read one more award winning novel by a female Asian author about the atrocities committed against their childhood, she thought. Then she sat down with her trusty yellow pad and Papermate fineline to write the next lyrical story of a female Asian writer and the…
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1964 4 1
|
My father is remarkably clever. That is, for a rundown, henpecked fisherman. He has caught me again. He has me slung over his back in a rickety lobster trap and I can hear him huffing and the water in him sloshing and though I can't see his face, I imagine it is ruddied…
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1964 27 18
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1. The ghost that photographs my wife and me has a peculiar sense of lighting. In this one, we are sitting at the kitchen table of our old apartment. The table is made of glass. There is nothing on the table except our elbows. She has lowered her head between her…
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1964 7 1
|
Sophie didn't stop for lunch when she worked. She showed up first in the morning and worked through until the last package was delivered. She pedaled from building to building and walked quickly, at just shy…
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1964 9 4
|
History is replete with brutally imaginative techniques of torture and execution, but I am the only death machine that doubles as a musical instrument.
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1963 21 13
|
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1963 8 5
|
As long as he could still take the stairs, he would go down there to be with the memories that each piece held. He knew that their time was about up, because his was too. His wife had already gone, and even before that she had long stopped using the washe
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1963 4 2
|
Two by two they come walking
down 7th Ave
girl with girl
boy and girl
boy and boy
two pigeons strolling
side by side
two robins
two crows walking stiffly
like two pieces of
anthracite coal
two spiders
two dogs sniffing each oth
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1962 5 4
|
Are you asleep? He says.
Wake up.
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1962 2 1
|
I used to think the world was fucked and it was up to me and me alone to see it unfucked. That's really what I used to think, but I've been trying to work on that. It's not a particularly flattering characteristic I have. I'm trying to be more positive.
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