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Picnicking In Mt. Misery Cemetery We breathe the damp shade, plum trees shining in a woodland where there are few wrong things I want to remember-- the steel fence of the power company blazing under an arc light is one. On this day of ripening fruit …
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The entire room seems waiting for me like an octopus behind a closed, chained door. The monk of the lamp knows he will get his daily turn-on if he prays loudly and just enough for it. The favorite chair has my blue dent in its punched…
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A daydreams about a woman whose name he’s forgotten next to B, who’s been drunk since afternoon.
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I heard a voice. It was calling me as from a far-off cloud. I listened, holding my breath, and heard it again, though fading away, barely audible. If I hadn't known my name I wouldn't have decrypted it. Three hazy syllables clearly detached with a sigh between each of them.…
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I'm trying to make love to her but she wants to talk.
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I was about sixteen or seventeen when James Miller had a stroke and died. He was a friend of my father's and a preacher-guy. The last time our church had been that full was at the barbecue the weekend after the church was built. Somehow, the structure went…
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1434 4 2
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Frank was about to take the first bite of a chicken salad sandwich.
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1434 4 2
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I remember this vivid dream I had once. Maybe you were in it? I’m not sure. There was a gang of spitting men outside this bar, standing beside a whole row of gleaming motorcycles, with tons of chrome, and I remember my dreams were their feathers. They
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Moonless sky of stars, silently flickered by bats, with constellations defined and bold. The curve of the plough matching that of your shoulder, as if it were a decoration.
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The walls of our shanty were of the standard corrugated rusty metal typical of communities like ours.We did our cooking over a Bunsen burner purloined from the Catholic Boys' School - beans mostly. We did our drinking from bottles of Thunderbird or Old Crow (when…
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His beloved are paper-thin when he blows into the free end. Green tint from copper.
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In my mind the village of 300 souls is called Nedoweska, but I confess that that's just a dreamy nickname I had for it as a boy. For various geopolitical reasons it had since become noteworthy as a historical site, though our interest was purely personal.…
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1434 4 0
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Jillian speeds across the stone wall, the hem of her dress flaps violently behind her. Sometimes she stands with her back fully erect letting perpetual motion guide her down a bend with her sun blonde locks brightening the dreary sky, or she lurches her
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In the backyard with Joey, I make the mistake of answering him honestly when he asks what the gray brick in the dirt is for. “My parakeet is buried there,” I say. And he asks, “can we dig it up?”Joey's grandma lives down the street; he comes over…
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I. The sun's corona. Empty boxes near the firehouse. Red birth. A bird's lost wing. II. The bitterness of littleness. Apples in a pile.Early love.A spider, swinging. III. A father's harshness.Twelve bills unpaid. Leaves in a crevice. A dream…
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while you peed on that little old lady's begonias
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In the morning I listen through an ear-trumpet
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“Forever you will be mine” she said to me, and of course I did not believe her. She was a romantic and so was I, and such words habitually dripped out of her lovely mouth like honey from the comb, in a never-ending flow of flattery which I am ashamed to s
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"Don't pull too hard," warned Father. "You might sever it from the body, spraying blood into your eyes."
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They say I'm supposed to see everything as a nail, but I have a silver head. Too soft for bang-bang. Too soft for anything but sitting on a shelf. I sat in her classroom for twenty-five years. She was proud of me and pointed often to the words inscribed on me that I can't…
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1433 6 0
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That was some root beer float. It cost us a grand total of $275.
She pulls up in front of Fenton’s Ice Cream Parlor and leaves the motor running while I jump out and run into the parlor.
It was early evening. We HAD to have a root beer float. You
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He gave her everything she hoped for, with the exception of two things.
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1433 2 0
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Liking up with the Joneses...
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this elegant silver wrench/
which from the opposite side/
becomes a golden Phillips-head
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1433 0 1
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No one told us that the LZ was already hot and the last Combat Mobile Team had already been shot down and killed. No, no one told us that. So when we came in below about 500 feet I began to hear that "pitit" sound of AK-47 rounds going right through the f
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I once saw a TV commercial that showed a group of Anglo retirees laughing around a card table. The slogan 60 is the new 20 floated beneath their fat, fun-loving heads. My parents are bona fide Baby Boomers. Their lives are build on credit and catchy…
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1433 2 1
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What the five-year-old I baby sit for wanted to do yesterday was torture his Barbies. “Why would you want to do that?” I asked.“Because we're bad guys!” said Hanina. “Can't we be good guys?”“Not today. Today we're bad…
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In moving crowds I plan to break you.
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A man in Watchupecka, OH, was charged Wednesday night with drunken driving in heavy traffic in downtown Watchupecka when he failed to stop for a red light.
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1433 1 1
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Stanley had a crush on Sarah. They were in Ms. Goldman's freshman chemistry class together fifth period. That day they were working on homework at Sarah's house while her parents were gone. Stanley was in heaven.“Break time!” Sarah woke Stanley from daydreaming,…
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