1968 2 0
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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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1968 11 7
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My dad at the wheel, my mother's ulcer inflamed, she puked her way across northern Alabama that summer, from Huntsville and the rusting rockets to Tuscumbia, the farthest any of us had been west. We drove through raw, blistered towns,…
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1968 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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1968 7 6
|
...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.
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1968 12 8
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On the usefulness of hands.
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1967 2 0
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the unhealthiness of obsession and control until the lines burn bright
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1967 8 4
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Jesus Freaks will go tat head... crowns of thorns for their noggins and so on. Christ had one too...
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1967 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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1967 6 1
|
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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1966 13 15
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1966 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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1966 20 13
|
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 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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1966 27 18
|
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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1966 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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1965 1 2
|
She can tell you seven things she doesn’t love about her face.
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1965 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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1965 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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1965 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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1965 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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1965 17 12
|
Conceptio culpa
Nasci pena
Labor vita
Necesse mori
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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 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 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 24 13
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1964 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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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 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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