2056 2 1
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This stage of Junior’s young life was static, moving very little off-center since his graduation from high school five years ago. Treading water both professionally and emotionally never worried him. Not until after what transpired that night when Pr
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205693
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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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205642
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It scraped at Paul’s brain like a cat’s claw at the door. He hadn’t heard the song in years. Was that the Searchers? The Seekers?
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2055146
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"Are you all right?" I ask. He blinks. He sits up. I help him stand. He looks sorrowfully at his coffee cup, which is on the floor.
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205511
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Ikkyu liked coming over especially at dinner. I'm a great cook and even though he no longer needed to eat himself, the idea of a sumptuous meal and a nice bottle of wine appealed to him. We'd commune about the poetry of karma flowers, seafood, and women, he in his robes and…
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20551415
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A crone dressed in black pours liquid from a bottle onto the egg. Whiskey. Gasp! The egg cooks before our eyes!
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2055146
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The winter following their son's death, Mr. Kelly's wife became absorbed by the tracks that ran in back of their house. At any given hour in the night, he'd hear her in the next room, their son's old room where she now slept, shuffling through dresser drawers. He…
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2054168
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I didn't go to China, however. I would have gone there in debt wearing their clothing. I was afraid to owe even $4,000 (what I still owe) living overseas.
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2053105
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If it were known that I am as stupid as I am, if the press were to open that page on TV, if the laughter shot itself like fireworks out into the road--
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205376
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The protagonist’s story goes like this:
1.) You are young. You’ll get over it.
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20532312
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You, the correct Other, the one I am looking for, you have exacting standards concerning where things must go.
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20531517
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born to be mistreated by beasts in human shapes
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20531614
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There are simply no more words around me quite full enough yet to sort of cancel outthese more than emptied ones. I'm sorry. There might be some forever fields left ofcrowded purple flowers if you look hard enough but no mountain's majestyto…
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205210
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I've been struck with a bout of writer's block, struggling to get pen to page or finger to keyboard....So I make paper airplanes.
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2052108
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Twelve people in the band,
the two women arrive first
(arrive on time).
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20524722
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Only strong personalities can endure such size, the weak ones are extinguished by it.
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20522112
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She could live there forever, in that smokey memory...
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2051149
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for the rush of longing
and brush with flight
that is her imagination
will surely lift her above the traffic
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205123
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In reenactments of the pressing to death of Giles Corey, Walter’s friends stacked pillows onto his chest while he defied his inquisitors.
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2051115
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You aren’t easy to explain, you Americans.
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205187
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Whenever talk dies, or darkness gathers too closely around the breakfast table, everyone knows the list of ritual activities we can brightly suggest to skip the day forward.
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20501711
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I fired God today. He wasn't showing up for work, slept through meetings, wrote ambiguous memos and killed too many innocents. Things just weren't working out.
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205021
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If the photographs made sounds, they would rumble like static from an impending thunderstorm, pressed between the pages of a yellowing dictionary. Compressed sound, searching for the proper words.
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2050118
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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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2049107
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He shows me how lift the windshield wipers up, clean under them, put them down and I follow him around, watch him slap the sham over the van, pull it away, slap again. I do the same, stop every few minutes like Daddy does, hold it out, twist, wring the sh
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204973
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Ancient erections loom aloft
ringed by decades
centuries for some
in gnarled scabs of pine.
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2049119
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oh, sure i’m still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet/profit/fit trying to cut off my very own de/(con)instruction and all other sordid a•void•able & available /a-Babel-Trumpish towers of post & toastmodern doom/daze/haze
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20482515
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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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2048138
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I want nothing to do with anyone,
other than doing nothing with you.
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2048103
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They slept in the same bed but that was all they had in common. He, an editor, had shelves filled with literary works and she, his wife of many years and never much of a reader, had strewn their penthouse apartment with Madeline children’s books.
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