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(Withheld) 1970

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The Moon The hatch of the lunar module hissed as it opened, a few puffs of leftover water vapor escaped toward them in a sparkling white cloud that rapidly dissolved…

Buck, naked

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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.

My Gall Bladder is Really Warm Today

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The English phrase "Nice to see you" translates into "My gall bladder is really warm today" in Berik, a language of New Guinea. What Language Is, John McWhorter

The Fields

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Swat at those screeching children with tufts of harp-grass. Flail, mad eyed and sad sighed with all gleaming hope gone out of the daylight. Swat and screech swat and screech. We continue until their thick bark-like hides are smooth and polished. We sand them with…

Mark Twain's Typewriter

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Did I refer to Mark Twain’s typewriter as an animal? Did I call it a hyena? I would not say that about Mark Twain’s typewriter.

The Human Phenom Project

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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

The Phone Call and The Green Murk Crisis

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hangs inverted and begins a swirling motion,

Off We Go Then

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Wish more than ever there was a more perfect way to mean everything I say. If I could I'd certainly walk all my words right up to your face now and give them over, hand to hand so to speak. That's the point at which I'd very much…

Inheritance

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I blame you for my short temper when I go off the handle when my blood runs cold and I can't think straight I can only react. When I say things I don't mean Even if I do. But I am glad for the fire you started inside of me. That time I…

The Fine Madness

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A phrase, a sentence, a stanza,/ sounds among the sums and lists/ and starts a scratched cascade/ of syllables and other approximations--

Full of Mad Hope

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full of mad hope / we dash into the street / leap into the fray / and enter splendiferous lists

forgiveness

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she sees that no one has considered her needsshe feels left out, and so she strikes outon the offensive, nostrils flaringpoints her finger and makes her caseshe has been wronged, justified in her angershe will not back downthe accused one is hurtstrikes back with her own…

Frankenstein's Monster Eats the Brains of Virgins at the Witches' Chainsaw Orgy Massacre

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If Heaven holds forth its own Infinity, What of selves, of ours, could we stand to see? Cradled with harsh fangs of Memory, Deep forgetfulness, give rather me- Let bright dreams be our self's divinity: Forever holds, in morrow's hours, such little…

Carmen Scarpino, Pioneering Wise Guy, Dead at 78

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Breasts were developed after World War II, the result of improved nutrition and the additional muscle mass that “Rosie the Riveter”-types acquired through manual labor in jobs that males abandoned to join the war effort.

Dreams Bright White Smash

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She was there then gone then there again. We were naked and wet and touching, she let me touch her, but she didn't want to be there. But she was, despite herself. It was my dream. You can go if you want. …

Learning to Live With Radical Presbyterians

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Proponents of this pragmatic line of thinking say a tolerant approach to Islam will succeed where force has failed to persuade terrorists to abandon the religious fanaticism. It's certainly worth a try--it worked with Presbyterians.

The Cusp of Leaving

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She waited on the hot, broken pavement, arm outstretched, her thumb a ticket to a distant, refracted horizon. Waves of heat danced like undulating snakes under the spell of a charmer. She pictured herself passing through them, abandoning the green of home for the…

Sailor's Visa

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He's got a rager for Casablanca, the old Bogart and Bergman classic. I can't snap him out of it.

The Black Madonna

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They say I am filthy. On this high pillar I perch like a stuffed avian relic, flightless, no prey. The horizon before me is broken by scuff and foreign tongue, by atomized evil. Pleas, and there are many, are answered by the only prayer I know, the one prayer, which…

Almost There

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On the phone I asked my mother how she was doing. “I’m getting old,” she said. “Going slow. But getting there. I’m ninety-four!” My mother was always 94, when she was really 93. I remember she was 93 right after she turned 92. And 92

Fear

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Fear I’ll be stuck here without a ladder

The Bricks

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He ordered a palace built, and the builders came to blows, which is why the father’s eyes have swollen shut, and the oldest son’s knuckles are bright plums.

You Have No Idea

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“I want you to face the toys!”

Zero

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The arithmetic of human experience/ is always a losing game for some. Poor Jane. Rich Dick.

Ohio Man Charged with Drunken Driving on Motorized Barstool

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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.

the leisure to walk about sweetly

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You seemed to have that leisure to walk about sweetly when I was with you, honey-singing the reward for the intensity of emotion you lunged about in. Nothing seemed like it was going to hurt or harm anyone, even while I was going nuts between the legs.

When the Germans Were on the Roof of the World

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Flew a Messerschmitt. Drove a tank over people in Poland though not in Prague, and claimed he was never a guard at the death camps.

The Hitler Channel

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The sound of a siren approaches his home. His wife asks him why he's so nervous. It's nothing, he says, but he rises from the couch and peers into the night from behind the curtains. The siren approaches relentlessly. The road twists and turns and the sound fades but always…

How to Kill a Dragon Dead

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The worm was stabbed where two rivers branch:/ the thing that would slay was slain.

Moving Out

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Lying in the blissful glow of young television. Idly sleeping, eyes open and ears closed.