1988 23 22
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The painting was on loan from a gallery in Chicago. We stood there connecting the dots.
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19882821
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My only brother. Frantic flesh clings to bone.
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198841
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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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19881813
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—Was it true, what you wrote in that poem?
—Pretty true.
—What do you mean “pretty true”? Was it true or wasn’t it?
—It was as close as you get to truth in poems.
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198742
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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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19872618
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Watching water fall in the longest waterfall/
becomes immediately tedious
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198673
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Recently I think I became someone else.
When the alarm clock rings in the morning, it sounds sharper than usual; getting up, my feet don't seem to quite touch the floor; looking into my bathroom mirror, my face seems to be melting, sliding, my eyes dri
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198685
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When I feel the sort of longing that sneaks up on me unawares, the sort held for the wrong kind of person that can make a woman clutch her heart in the night and sullies her blood with unwanted dreams in a thinking person's landscape, I hear, too, the deep…
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198601
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I wonder how much time she has left. I think she’s seventeen. I don’t know for sure because she was already grown when I got her from the pound, just before Christmas, years ago this was --back when I had hair and hope.
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198512
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My parents were married for forty five years. “A lifetime,” is how the rabbi at my mother's funeral describes it. The man says it with such a tone of familiarity, of genuine sadness, that one might think he has known and adored my parents all their lives. But…
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19852915
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In a rousing show of support for guns and the owners who love them, the Legislature passed and Governor Greg Abbott gleefully signed a law proclaiming April 15 as Take Your Gun to Work Day in Texas.
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198542
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Flush, a sputter, and the water level rises, slowly. Flush again.
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198483
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“Would you consider renewing for the next season?”
“We’re not interested.”
“Can I ask you why?”
I considered my reply. I was thinking of mincing my words. The man on the other end of the line seemed, how should I put this, somewhat s
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1984107
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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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198433
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In the spring, my father would dress for class in a bear costume and chase students around campus.
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19841210
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The coffins pile up gnawing dust on the glass panes to the rims of my binoculars. Shadowy cracks of stifling proportions, gliding over my eyes a requiem of mahogany. At dawn they heave between the workers’ hands, leave their resting places for a green tra
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1984219
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There is a small church in the south of Italy, with a stained-glass window depicting the sister of John The Baptist.
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19842319
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Alice writes three different versions of the letter. The last one is the most tempered, the most like her, but still it is such an unlike-her thing to do. The couple who lives above her has been disrupting her sleep nearly every night for the past three weeks. The woman's…
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198320
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“Nothing we have here can stop them,” the Lumi said, “We were hoping there might be something in your world we might try.”
“Even if we had something, how would I get it to you?
”We are working on that, in the meantime, will you help us?”
I
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198321
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A recent book reveals that nature documentaries are staged. Shocked by such claims we went on location to discover for ourselves the behind-the-scenes manipulations and more. Director: “You'll spot the wildebeest, freeze, and then charge. Okay? And try to bring…
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1983175
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I try to help my pet-mouse by dangling cheese from a piece of string in front of him. Or by making meow sounds. Sometimes, my pet-mouse wins, sometimes the hamster with the great body.
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1983129
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Some time ago, I began to write you letters with the idea of helping your newspaper become a more complete map of our little shared world.
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1983159
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The violin hung on the wall after that, a witness.
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19831815
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I forgot how masterful you are, way better than a pickpocket. After our meeting, I drove home with one hand. It felt funny but I figured I'd absentmindedly put the other in my purse or tossed it into the backseat with my jacket. In my…
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198363
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circa the early 90s, Buzz Aldrin and my father had been invited to a dinner at someone's house on Bainbridge Island and gotten lost.
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198332
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You call the shit in this paper news? ‘Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform, The Truth About Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter.' Seriously? Enough about Elvis already.
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198321
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Fate could have sent me any number of Sergeant-Detectives, but fate sent me one of Boston’s finest, Sergeant-Detective Sheila Magnuson. Aside from being a little undernourished Sheila Magnuson is possibly the world’s most beautiful Sergeant-Detective.
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198230
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The first photo above shows plainly: five children dressed in suits and dresses. There are three girls. Each girl wears a yellow sundress with chiffon ribbons. The boys have been terrorizing them--the girls, not the dresses.
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19822013
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You died from a bad heart.
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198200
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You came to me In the self made calm Causing quite a storm You want me to rejoice and relax? Not knowing my fears Shall we ever fly?
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