1788 4 2
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While I was still new at Black & Twigg, shortly before Thanksgiving, Percy brought me a handwritten memo to type, the subject “Turkey Hunt,” addressed to all Black & Twigg employees in the San Francisco office from management. It said that the firm…
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1788147
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where is the magic at?
the spit
the dirt
or the words?
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1788115
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This weekend was supposed to be about intellect and soul-mating, but, like all others, it's turned into body and longing. You sit in my passenger seat and I let you smoke in my wee car with the windows rolled down. We've come from a wedding, a fairy ring, a…
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178733
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Waking in the middle of the night, tangled in the hotel sheets, I wanted to hear the story again: their pilot friend, the war, his specialty. "It's just a screw, son," Dad said, "nothing exotic."
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178752
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1787129
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His knife enters the Maui onion. He minces garlic and applies heat to pan and melts sweet cream butter and browns the garlic first and then he adds the onion and more heat, but it's time that will surely caramelize them. Salt and pepper and splashes of wine for the pan and…
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178784
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Bare feet on hardwood floor
Twists into circles
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17871010
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Yellow Pages season is on us now, and Jimmy's drivin' a contract route. He'll head out to the San Joaquin where they print, and load ‘em in the back of his Tundra with the high side walls until the whole damned rig sags low,
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178720
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I remember being sent a picture once from one of my old roommates, Louise, back in Chicago where I came from. The photo was taken when she’d come out for a visit to California. In the picture I am sitting on the front stairs of my house in the Rockridge
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178763
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You took up residence on the dark side of things, a bolthole in a wind-flayed right angle of a tower block where pigeons and suicides tumbled blackly on the air currents. You set about drifting off from who you were on a tide of cheap whisky and bad poetry, graduating…
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178733
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Susan was twenty-four when it happened again, but she had neither the patience nor the attachment to see it through.
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178732
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There's still a swatch of jelly on his lower lip. Did you notice? That's not the way it's done, even on the tractor.
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178753
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The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue just came out, and all over America librarians are flipping through its pages and rolling their eyes. The swimsuit issue, which isn't actually about swimwear at all, but, is, instead, about young, beautifully shaped female…
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17871514
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I bear the wrong gin. Your air conditioner runs cold. It is either frigid or off, the gauge broken. You are not too old to overlook these things. You can't be choosy, but you will never beg. Just an occasional choice as you settle into this…
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1787106
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He is drilling the door of a safe to access the keys he locked inside.
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178620
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I love reading about myself. There's nothing more gratifying than seeing my name in the paper, knowing so many people are interested in who I am and what I do.
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178633
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I know I’m slipping
into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone
with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans.
And who is this listening to NPR in the morning
while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,,
peonies han
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178666
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There is a push-up on the ceiling. I don't know how to get it down. I've tried hitting it with a broom. That just made it blow steam. I asked my wife, did you do push-ups on the ceiling? She did. Why? It's easier up there. The cat doesn't bother me. Well, you left…
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178621
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Oh no, here is that Whitman man
I’ve heard he is a bounder.
Don’t look his way or catch his eye-
Just get another round, dear.
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178687
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We want our lives even-cut, …
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178621
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I look at that wall, it has piss-stain yellow paint and water scars from several years of leaky pipes. I say I wouldn’t mind that, if he took out some of that wall.
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178664
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When I was 17, they said in an e-mail that you would get too drunk to function and that you would abuse them, verbally, and do way more than embarrass them in public. They said you'd yell at them and hit their mom for any reason. They put a restraining order on you.…
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1786107
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She can never say why, but guilt rides her bones
like the spirit. She rubs worry raw.
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178612
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It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t great. And it never is with people.
Except..eventually..when you meet the right person..it is.
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178633
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Some trick of the morning light makes the tattoo on her ankle look like the burn from a branding iron. She had watched her father as he slept last night. He was handsome and innocent, like a baby boy.
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178685
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178655
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Alessandro was no ordinary demon (what demon is?), insofar as he had Constable Pulce's number. In demonly fashion he had Pulce's number in a way Pulce himself did not.
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178562
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178584
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SPOT ON OUR LUNG We sense A stillborn dawn. A furtive, lurking gray, A sleight of dusk, eclipse, that follows Us. TITANIC'S LANTERNS Upon My rain-glazed panes Wet lights from neighbors glow Like lantern beams from shipwrecks…
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178582
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The Numbers will never romp up the stairs from the laundry room to slip warm socks on your feet on a winter’s night.
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