1183 2 1
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Two days before Christmas 1946, my mother put me on an Illinois Central railroad train at the whistle stop of Neoga, Illinois.
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118373
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We spend life, or much of it rather, chasing epiphanies promised to us by hip prophets and free spirits.
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1183137
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Don and I return to Rasheed's room on the top floor of the middle house where Uzma sits waiting to speak her piece. I'm feeling blessed listening to their enthusiastic chatter. It's like the world is opening up to me again, allowing me to experience a rush of…
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118321
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If there was a single constant in the boy’s life, it was that he had always thrown knives. In his youth he had thrown them only in his mind . . .
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118300
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It is suddenly very cold. Mon opens his eye. He sees fog, the ground. A skeletal tree. Where am I? he thinks. ... Mon listens. He can hear distant noises through the fog: laughter, …
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118232
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Remembering Ginsberg
who howled through just about everybody's idea of the real weirdo poet
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11822411
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118255
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I guess you’re gone now
That’s okay
I guess I can live with my own ghosts
I had no idea
What it meant
But now I do
It meant I was standing
At the end of everything
And did not know it
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1182138
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If opposites attract, that might explain it, Doreen and I. Conjugally blissed through thick and thin. Forty some odd years. Since June of sixty five.
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118200
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I smoked my cigarro under his watchful eye. We were never able to make too much conversation even when I was teaching him at Educenter. Now that David had opened his own school, Evert had come to learn with him because it was much more affordable, but he
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1182125
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the memories return like they do every year at this time
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118211
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And here I am again.
I chew my nails. I tap my foot. I chew my nails. I sweat. I bleed. My nose bleeds. It drips. I drip. I'm dripping through my chair.
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118241
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I'm in our bed eating yesterday's pizza and chain-watching pirated foreign horror films
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118254
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The war they wage fills everything with holes.
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118200
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Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. It was an unexpected meeting, but one that was sure to bring a lot of change for both. They met at a work event. Some friends wanted to put together a company and they had both been invited to be part of the project. Boy smiled. Girl remained…
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11821310
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the ugliness will not be denied
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118220
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No matter how you do it, forgetting something doesn’t mean as much once you’ve forgotten.
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118271
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She talks about window treatments, how the place is maybe too much for one. Wants me to know she’s not much of a cook, and wants me to smell what’s in her oven and compliment her cooking anyway.
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118244
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The only silver lining? The man in my life and I are in this together.
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118211
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When I was six, my father brought home a fishbowl. Look out for the inhabitants, he said. You can play Neptune in their microcosm of the sea.
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118231
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"do you know what your problem is when it comes to girls?"
she must mean other than the fact that they're all
completely insane. or at least all the ones i've dated.
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118210
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And my word! Wouldn’t you know it, in two shakes of a jiffy they have shucked off all their clothes and are butt naked right here in my den. I don’t have to wonder what Mother would say if she could see them here. “Keep the noise down, boys!” I ha
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1182139
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I don’t remember much about kindergarten.... The teacher’s name was Mrs. Halverson. She was nice.
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118242
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...it's about female needs, Rex.
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11821311
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My books wound you. They wound me / too.
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118211
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Then a flicker caught my eye. To the left of the balcony, where the residential high-rise abutted a commercial building to its right, a shape--half-dark, half-lit--stood on a limestone ledge.
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1182104
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I do this when I think of you. Today we took the first steps towards you're never here.
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1182109
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Margaret will take her seven away from his raging Irish hammers slurry Saturday night honks smashing red eyes. They'll board a secret train countryside bound where they sing the songs of her own dead Mam who lived poor in the world but…
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118200
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In desperation, the city council imported a shaman to exorcise whatever demons had possessed the house.
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118200
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THE LAST THING I WANTED, expected, or needed was to be standing in the doorway of Carly Ray's room, watching her clutch a picture of her father, my old friend Beryl, up to her face. She is so tiny, but at the same time there is something very adult about the way she looks.…
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