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That night we slept on the floor of Kirk and Maggie’s apartment and listened to them arguing all night about art and life and love. Ah, me, I sighed, the sad soul of America! I thought of Walt Whitman. I thought of Allen Ginsberg.
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229697
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Should have washed our hands, we thought after, licking sugar-spit and dirt.
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22951210
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SeesWe fell into this lake together and traced the clean soft lines straight back to ourselves, with a carefree laugh, ha ha ha-- an embarrassing ease. This small miracle does tend to put in orbit something high flying besides clouds into the sky inside of…
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229520
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Old man Hensley was fed up. With everything, he would say, if one was so inclined to ask (which was not advisable). It was his first morning as an official retiree and, if it was…
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22951412
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I interviewed in an hour and didn’t have an umbrella, so I ducked inside the next door I passed. It didn’t matter what they sold, I wasn’t there to make a purchase.
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229454
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“I don’t see how anybody could do it.”
“I could do it. I could do it because it ought to be done. When a thing needs doing, it’s best to go on and do it.”
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22942116
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Highway 45N cost me four dogs when I was growing up. Actually, having our backyard abut the highway was the real problem. It got to be where I was afraid to get too attached. We lost Nicky,…
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229442
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I lock the last of the beer and wine doors and head back to the cash register. Our clocks are not on bar time so I only have a few minutes. I check the till. A stack of ones and three fives. Enough to break a twenty, but looking bare. The parking lot's empty. The air…
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22932214
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229371
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Jacob Obrecht, you are beautiful. Everything inside your head and everything you’ve ever made is beautiful and singing.
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229331
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The crackling inferno sweeps across the ground
Devouring all in its scorching path
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229386
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There was man from antiquity that sat next to me. His belief in the healing qualities of Aloe Vera so pronounced, that the house brimmed with such. He had no use for modernity in any of its forms but was fond of supermarkets. When in one he was overwhelmed with an…
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229295
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For two days, I bashed out words with grimacing fingers, wrenching images from my whining consciousness – a weak, lumbering, uninspired piece – and now for what?
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229193
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Backs in the grass, legs straight, bare feet resting at angles, Rachel and I, both of us seven, looked up through the oak limbs that made black lightning cracks across a blinding blue sky. Three hula hoops sat trapped in the trees’ sprawled grasp.
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229164
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I find my mother’s pink Pyrex mixing bowl at the antique store on Fairview Avenue. It’s in the hands of a fat woman in a blue down parka, and she’s holding it upside down, squinting at the sticker on the bottom.
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229110
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The sun browbeat me relentlessly, like a one-eyed judge with an unforgiving heart.
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22911313
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we share somewhat the same past
he was bureau chief of ABC overseas
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229195
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We'd both done well to avoid crying before today and I couldn't stand to see him like this. I crawled on my hands and knees to the closet. “David, come out of there. I…I don't like this any more than you do. But you can't come to college with me.
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22902515
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I came from the only flat region in the kingdom of mountains and fjords, and called the city “Down in the Dumps”. The beleaguering mountains smelled a flatlander when they saw one, and hated me right back.
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229021
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round & round
this empty block
again & again i go
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229043
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That’s the way it went all day with me—didn’t get far, didn’t see much, just, with Mary, drank tea here and there. A fine day it was, too; not cloudy, not raining...
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228955
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The story will starve. It will crawl up your throat to get the cracker.
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228920
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Until millennia have passed and the world is dug up
For future historians to ponder
And through their meticulous disassembling of dirt
They will find my book.
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228823
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My father's hands were huge. His left knuckles gashed as a kid when he rode his bike too close to a moving train. When his fingers fisted around a glass, the scarred joints bulged from his grip like blind eyes.
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228822
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A little bony for my tastes–I wonder if she’s on the Lady Di diet. I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers, but it would be like sleeping with Eva Braun.
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228792
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It's not that you want to be silkworm all your life. That's what I'm telling my on-again-off-again girlfriend aboard the plane. Her name is Phoebe as in that song about a girl who lived in her own world within the shell of another. Phoebe, I'm saying, to bridge distances…
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228785
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Your pajamas torture us.
When moist they uncomfortably cling. They have evil buttons, and they cause us to stumble on them in the dark.
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2287159
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She's always sitting in a soft chair watching television with little stars dotting her elbows and lightning bolts on her wrists.
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2286118
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Erin Hoffmeyer Zulkoski. I was at work today, doodling on a piece of scrap paper. I often find myself writing my name, practicing my signature, for when I become famous. I have always written "Erin Zulkoski." Today, I wrote "Erin Hoffmeyer." This…
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228600
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Every trip her mother leaves it until then: Shouldn’t she look for an apartment in a better area; shouldn’t she try for a job with some future? “And, you know, someday you could get married, Carmen.”
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