1341 3 3
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Her funeral was scheduled for the following Monday, and of course Claudia would attend. Trouble was, Monday was a workday for my parents. So when neither Mother nor Claudia could find somebody else on short notice to keep me, it was decided that I would a
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When Uncle Dan got sent to the Alzheimer's ward, the ladies licked their lips. Fresh meat.
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So I’ll wait for her to clear all burden from her head and feel the ocean move us. Stand up, walk over to me and kiss me as we glided through open water.
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Now his daughter was an American citizen and Max wanted only the chance to board the SS Maua and disembark in New York.
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1341 2 1
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“Hear that?” asks my wife Amy. Books in hand, we relax on our flagstone patio. A shaft of late-day sun borrows through the maples' leafy canopy and deposits a dazzling, sunlit pool on Amy's lap. …
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1341 0 0
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Crack open the roof-- raise the battery on a platform with chains
up into the lightning
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1341 4 2
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I was raised in a big city in the slow South. I know a little about cross cultural dining and where Delta Blues collides with Sly Stone, Al Green, and Zeppelin. Dirty rice in the Dirty South. Fried chicken, collards, and pintos. Fried velveeta…
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1341 4 4
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The gaudy belt buckle I got you, which would have been well-received except that you hate gaudy belt buckles.The custom t-shirt I made for you using iron-on felt letters that generously enhanced the shape of your breasts in a way unfit for public display.The wedding…
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1341 12 8
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fetal position can make a man seem small. harmless. like the child your womb won't carry...
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1341 5 1
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Class (appears in my book Breaking it Down; no journal publication) When your neighbor James Frehley cusses you out for hanging a block and tackle from the silver maple in your front lawn, begin to pull the engine from your Galaxie anyway, smile and nod…
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1341 1 1
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My sister, Bonnie, is busy with the dishes as I enter the kitchen; I toss the mail I was sorting through onto the table and look around for Sophie, my four-year-old daughter. "Bonnie, isn't she ready…
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The two were huddled in a corner of an alley, joined by some others that I’m sure wandered into the darkness when they realized they were far from alone. That alley was the one off Market Street. I used to steal candy from the corner shop when I was nin
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1341 6 4
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I blame the fucking mosquito net.
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1341 0 0
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We knew this year would be different because we bought bikinis. We had never worn bikinis before. Our swimsuits had always been shiny one-pieces with stripes, or polka dots, or tiny yellow fish. Not this year. It was a hot summer and the department store was overly …
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1341 15 9
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fat furry marmots who play hide and seek
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What I Love About HistoryMy roommate, Cara, wears all black, which she thinks scares me. I've never bothered to tell her I wore all black for two years, eighth and ninth grade, and I'm just over it, not that I think she's lame or passé, but there's nothing remotely…
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1341 2 0
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Bill (Gunnery Captain of the Left Hand Gun, HMM Plunderer), while not exactly obese, nor could a disinterested observer call him him rotund, was nevertheless the sort of man who'd never be caught by a famine unprepared. And because of this more than regulation…
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... and the train pulls up and my shadow from yesterday steps off, and I'm standing on one leg balancing just like the weather between winter and spring, I hear a siren and my heart races, I'm about to step aboard when I hear footsteps behind me and two hands cover my eyes…
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1340 17 8
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When I was young and self-born in religion my aunts, uninterested in being washed in the Blood of Christ, called me Preacher Boy. I didn't pay them any attention. It was fine by me, I said, if they wanted to sit around and paint their toenails . . .
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1340 1 0
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He first saw her stepping off a water taxi by the Long Docks in the rain at night, her right arm atrophied from some early childhood disease, dangling like an apology, her other holding a cigarette. Her wet black hair hung past her shoulders and her eyes
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1340 0 0
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The lungs forsake their love of breath. The arms/
resist throwing off the small weight of sheets.
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1340 13 11
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It’s been a series of bad clams
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1340 1 1
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Barbie wore only her clear pink heels...
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1340 12 8
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I pointed, trying to keep a rising frisson of alarm from my voice.
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1340 8 5
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It was by the well on one cold early spring morning
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1340 3 2
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"Pull around," Rachel says. "Pull around him, dammit."
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1340 0 0
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"I didn’t take my mother’s denial of my dream lightly. I wanted it desperately. I cried and pleaded, nagged and begged. On several occasions, I temperamentally got out of the car at a stop sign and walked. Once, my mother said that I was nagging her so mu
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1340 4 1
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In mid dream, mid journey, there's a barrier we must cross, flat and vast like an ocean. We're told the barrier is a monster. To cross the barrier we must maim one of its eyes. There, rising to the surface is half a large…
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