1408 3 2
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I've been in Tucson two days, and so far most of my conversations with my father have taken place while I crane my neck and squint into the sun. I scream up, he screams down.
He needs to fix the leaky roof before the rainy season, he says.
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140823
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As I was reading “Not Your Mother's Book on Home Improvement,” a new collection of light-hearted essays by (primarily) middle-aged female do-it-yourselfers, it became abundantly clear to me that, unlike the women who tell their stories here, I am not a…
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140800
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Reverend Peter Roman could stand it no more. He stopped his speech. He felt a fire burning through him, a hatred for humanity and all the weaknesses of beings not perfect before God. He stood a long while, staring at the congregation. Then, he slowly spok
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140821
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Jade in the emperor’s death
mouth – to the grave – all openings
closed – no breath – no air – no life
to enter to leave – the end should
be silent – you stop my mouth
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140887
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In the quiet dark, fathers reappear.
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1408108
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I call upon all cashiers in dungarees...
I call upon the baristas in rags...
I call upon those whose
sinister principles tax the weakness of their conscience...
I call upon all those deracinated by dreaming big...
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140800
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“You sure?” He nods. “Maybe it was pneuomonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” Flash of a smile, sobbing laughter, like an abandoned seal.
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140700
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Azure understood now. She felt it there as she remembered what she told Sora after her ordeal with the domed creature.
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140711
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"I'm just saying," the older man continues, "We oughta be ready in case she hits."
"We'll be fine," the woman says. "We've weathered every storm that's ever come through here just fine."
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140744
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You go out on a night with no moon, when all the stars are flush in the sky, when all of everything, even you, is just a shadow moving softly, and I swear, you can hear it, if you listen hard enough. The music. It’s like it’s coming from under the ground.
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1407105
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the poems/
we never got to will remain,
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140755
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a soft wooden clatter, wind-battered reeds/bound to the banks of ditches rank,/ill-purposed waters slide into low swamps/whose waters into rivers seep and crawl.
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140781
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Buck, naked, has no words. The best he can manage is a dopey strangulated cough. His wife, who is clothed, stands before him, next to the waterbed that took Buck half a day to force into the trailer.
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140721
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Okay, I’ll admit it, the earth was shaken on the world's underside, when you left for California. And I sometimes slept on the shores of Lake Michigan and Fox River for your tremendous thousand years’ charisma. To say I cried out in pain would be lettin
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140721
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He turned metal chains to rubber with the force of his mind. He prepared tacos for the paperboy.
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140766
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And pity us, this generation of sighing:
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140772
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and the President didn't call.
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140734
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Dark morning sleet whitecrusts the world
once more, shrouds remains
of January thaw:
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140731
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The whole scene smells like paranoia.
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140721
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“You think it’s a self-castrating suicide note or a self-righteous freedom speech?”
“Probably just the ramblings of a madman, pissed he lost a company baseball game.”
“Fuckin-A, Pete! Double-murder suicide for a baseball game? Ain’t nobody that craz
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140794
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Fear I’ll be stuck here without a ladder
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140700
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I remember screaming and wanting to run from the living room that time you came home drunk.
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140745
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I sat at
the vast graveyard
of broken hearts
on the mending fence
of wonderment
unsealing the silence
of the wounds
I began to put the pieces
together
like a puzzle against
forgetting
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140783
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The particles of dust didn't want to be looked at
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140743
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Reams of saggy bunting intersect the streets.
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140711
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I planned and planned. I followed the veterinarians around and I took vials of panda tranquilizers when they were not looking, and it was often that they forgot to look. The earth kept shaking, they were hungry, and many did not know what had become of th
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140733
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I imaged him at his mother's house, eating chicken and tabouli with her at her round marble table, leaning back and laughing, then reading my “love you” and excusing himself to cry in the bathroom.
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140732
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Lying in the blissful glow of young television.
Idly sleeping, eyes open and ears closed.
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140684
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140643
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YOU cross the park as the evening gathers, the playground is deserted, streetlights spark up orange beyond the trees that veil the main road. You feel your journey pushing at your back, the last scraps of the energy of a train hammering north. At the far edge of…
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