1281 4 4
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What if she doesn't take me seriously? My sweaty testimony wedged tight behind the tragic I used to think was honest? What if, right? What if . . . Isolation Real men feel that, right? They have …
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1281 7 4
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One day, he decided instead to be-pet them,
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1281 3 2
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“You can't smoke in here, Jack,” his father said. “Your mother will kill me.” Those were the first words spoken as the pair rode in silence from Chester County. Jack pulled the unlit cigarette from his mouth and tucked it above his ear. …
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1281 8 5
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I could tell you right nowwhat I'm thinking aboutbut that would not be sacrificeenough. Takes all kinds, and youonly listen when it'ssomething you think is instantlyoverpowering. I swear, there's always something not quiteright with you. There's a silly left…
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1281 9 5
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Someone must bear witness//
at a comfortable remove.
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1281 1 0
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I was in a nunnery wondering how I wound up in the midst of so many nuns as it wasn't my nature to hang out with nuns. I find them tedious and redundant, though I do have to say I appreciate their economy with words. You never really saw a…
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1281 5 5
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My wife said she’d only be gone 10 minutes. 10 minutes. She left me with the 2 boxes we couldn’t fit into the car, and went home to unload the 5 others. She’d be back in 10 minutes.
I got a call after half an hour, she was on her way back to get me. I
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1281 6 3
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Meeting the past an inevitable outcome (this inside a future fortune cookie). Shame pierces her like a sudden migraine.
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1281 1 1
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In his head the moment would have been different.
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1281 1 0
|
They pumped him full of electricity and waited.
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1281 7 4
|
I was disappointed with love, and like everyone else, stammered out of love
into a place horrified with meaning.
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1281 5 4
|
proper words fail to get proper points across . . . truthful words have no beauty,/beautiful words have no truth.
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1281 15 12
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Will it//
scare us shitless when we can finally/
draw ourselves a likeness of it?
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1281 0 0
|
Side morning lightthrough hydrangea crab, reachand shine off patio ice
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1281 0 0
|
they'd turned into humans overnight
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1281 3 2
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Ronnie comes home carrying two sacks of groceries, one including a four-pack of Virgil's root beer. This is heavy stuff. It amazes me she is able to carry these items up our steep hill, nearly a mile in distance. I watch the news on our French cable station while she…
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1280 11 5
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1280 5 5
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We jam into the green tent as it begins to rain. His casket is covered with flowers and there is the picture you took of him, the day you climbed the fire tower from where you could see forever, past his smiling face the bars and a million changing leaves.His pregnant girl…
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1280 4 0
|
I've been a fan of hagiography—the lives of the saints—since first grade when Claude Dunham and I were asked to represent St. Stephen and St. Sebastian, two martyrs of the early church, in a tableau vivant of bored boys.
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1280 2 0
|
Maria met her husband in World War Two. Maria is now eighty-two. She is from the country of Tuscany. She has lived in may countries. She was a war bride. She has a son. Maria's son is sixty-three. As a baby-boomer he won't retire until sixty-five Maria says.…
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1280 3 1
|
Dan Arris sat in Chez Colette enjoying a roulade of veal stuffed with root vegetables. He was not a happy man.
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1280 3 2
|
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1280 10 2
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So, once, we were all like sitting around the kitchen table, and it was so kind of like an okay sort of day to begin with. We were all like a secret theater of strangers, a living children's secret circle, meeting right in…
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1280 2 2
|
Too young to stay interested for long in the words I was reading. My father said the man was very intelligent and most of his writing was hard to understand.
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1280 21 14
|
Let routine/
propel you through/
the day after/
the day before.
|
1280 12 7
|
Extrapolate, interpolate/
to add imaginary flesh//
to fragmentary bones.
|
1280 0 0
|
Sam tapped the stick against the small mountain of trash bags, a dull thud predictably followed by a dozen rats scurrying out of the mass. He's started to make a personal game of it — seeing how many he can kill with one whack; if he swings hard enough, and in…
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1280 12 9
|
you shimmered me with attention
|
1280 1 1
|
|
1279 0 0
|
Even raw as she looked coming out of the jail, the woman left echoes.
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