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Swiss Miss Index

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Rye goods * Cracker brot: best practices * Recipes: never embellish! * Boughten: what to avoid

The Hangman's Poor Gift

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of placing the rope just so; of settling the veil with care --

The Day Nixon Died

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"I remember thinking, 'Good.'

Processes

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How to Boil Water How to Cook an Egg How to Eat How to Think How to Love How to Die

A Speck of Light

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That’s true, you know, what they said about the drummer and spontaneous combustion.

LECTURES

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LECTURES A Bra Burning When Freud painted “Envy,” the women collapsed, holding fans to their faces. Hot that year, they retired to the Tyrols. 50 Days of Palindromes Although Thiebaud painted cakes like women,…

Folly Island

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I knew a girl on Folly Island who took showers in water so hot her skin blushed pink rosettes.

Party w/Your Parents' Siblings

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Her mother sighed, fingering the faux-pearls around her neck. Barbara's neck tensed, almost as though the hair on the back of it would stand up: Here comes a platitude . . .

Poya Day

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Prabo was late. It wasn’t like him, I thought, sitting on the steps of the Galle Face Hotel, the Indian Ocean pounding the beach abutting the nearby Galle Face Green and spraying fine mist everywhere. Or at least it didn’t seem like him.

30 East Towards Texarkana

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44 miles out the gauntlet of Red River pines cast shadows pointing north.

The Puppet Maker

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My sister Janis called me from Berlin and said to turn on the news. You could see the thick flurries of snow that were falling there and the flat feathers of peoples' breaths issuing from their mouths as they took turns swinging pick-axes, standing on top

Opening Your Fiery Eyes

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as I imagine only you canyou're the ocean on fire before anyone else hasbroken that ancient seal, or simply taken the first icy plunge.You can eatall the bitterfruit there is, but that stilldoesn't make theworld a more hatefulplace. Only people…

Taunting the Tiger

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I was headed back inside my den since these creeps just wouldn’t stop and thought they were the most hilarious creatures on the face of the earth, and I was afraid, to be honest, that one of their missiles might hit me in the eye. That’s when I n

Sleep Music, No. 1

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Now they are sleeping in a poppy field, sun-drenched warm afternoon girls lying on their stomachs and sides, faces in flowers, and flowers blowing, blowing. If this afternoon were every afternoon, the world would be cured.

Arcana Magi Wisp

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Gon found himself slowing behind everyone. His wings slowly tired. The bird took a chance and pulled up. He could feel it behind him.

Pull Another String

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Now as my fearful hand goes unwittingly up I search the faraway trees for the closest possible answer I know I don't know. The clever waiting beast is looking my way with an intelligent roving eye that says he likes to hit. It doesn't matter. You're worse…

On being offered a seat on the Bart train

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Remember when I entered a room and turned heads is my youthful charm a sputtering fire in the hearth

1053

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She pulled into the doorway. Uncertain where to spend the night. Certain there'd once been a place with food. Here. This place. She remembered. Curtains. Small tables. Coffee cups thick-handled and sturdy. Crockery. Some words came back.

Prisoners (edited)

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This cell the sole certainty, all else steeped in mystery. Why should we be here?

A Killing in the Market

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Everyone hoped to be assigned somewhere they could just drop in on their way home for Memorial Day weekend. Someone said, Blake, you’re single. You hate your family, don’t you?

Whoever Said

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Though we came to life as to a school/ We leave without graduating

Heat

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Flames dance behind glass

Time Flies

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Time has wings. They are bright and beautiful, like those of a butterfly. They are delicate wings, and they carry the years away from my decaying mind. I would break those wings if I could, for tomorrow I turn seventy-three, and I grow weary of their ince

Sparky's Gambit

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Sparky took to me immediately. In some atavistic canine way he knew I was simpatico to a dog like him.

The People Who Won't Get Back to Me

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Literary agents, also editors, But most assuredly not my creditors, Someday they won’t mean jack to me— The people who won’t get back to me.

Sleepless #3

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My ex-girlfriends live in a pastel-drenched cabin on the edge of a hemlock forest in Canada somewhere,

Sold Out Shade

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We begged him to sell us some shade. Just enough for half an hour, until our bus would pick us up and drive us to our next destination, continuing what was turning out to be a purgatory tour of forgotten Mediterranean towns.

Darwin at the Zoo

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This year we have no need of spring!

The Birth of Roget’s Thesaurus

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“Imagine a Shakespearean scholar coming upon an undiscovered work by the Bard. That’s how thrilling this is."

black tulips

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the memories return like they do every year at this time