2180 3 2
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Since Patty got the lumpectomy, she won’t sleep with anyone but Cal, because he was the one who went with her to the hospital and wasn’t surprised when he saw the scar.
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218043
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First it makes me think about the time I held a live, albeit tranquilized, juvenile gator at a zoo in Florida when I was twelve. (Somewhere these's a photograph, no doubt, of me looking terrified and a gator looking asleep.)
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21801310
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I try to envision long-haired men riding horses across a vast expanse, their faces blank as those of my students.
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2180139
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It is Cary's favorite time of day. School is finished and he is alone, outside his home; and that is the way Cary likes it. Buffalo Bill is having a grand time today! In one corner of the backyard where the grass is bare, Cary is leading the little plastic Bill to…
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218087
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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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217921
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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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21791711
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Street mime in white face and white gloves, trapped in invisible box. Tip jar empty. Marcel's solo-dancing the tango now, teeth clenching ephemeral rose. Passersby pass him by.
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217800
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Brandon had never liked standing in line; it was a childish tendency he had never grown out of. What likely annoyed him the most was likely the stillness, the lack of motion despite everyone else's insistence that they were getting somewhere. And it was slow, too,…
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217800
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While Erik rubs my back, I fall asleep. I'm not lying on my bed in Florida - I'm face down on the pavement outside Brooklyn Pharmacy. And it's not Erik's hand smoothing oil of cassis into my skin, but that Officer Green's meaty one gripping me . . .
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2178176
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On the very day I was fired from Penn State, in 1971, I was also kidnapped by a short-lived underground student revolutionary group who spelled their own name wrong. They shoved me into the backdoor of a yellow rusted-out car on Atherton Street, blindfolded me. A…
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217820
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One day they will take what remains of my eyes so someone else can use them to see beauty, someone who will value them more than I have, someone who will be strong enough to keep them pointed away from ugly things.
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2177119
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21772313
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She stepped out of her panties. She spread her arms wide. "Take me!" she sang.
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217723
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I was dating my yoga class. It was going all right. Which is to say, the sex was pretty fantastic but otherwise I was beginning to lose interest. I'm thinking of one Saturday afternoon in the summer. We ended up browsing for Father's Day gifts at Crate & Barrel in …
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21771613
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This is self-reflection or self-reflexive writing. Candor but not verse. That is what I write: not-verse. On occasion I write a poem though rarely an occasional poem. Instead of calling it non-fiction we could call it non-verse.
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217697
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"...across from me
staring at my bare knees."
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2176113
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That summer crawled with them, insects of every denomination: cicadas caught by the cat, wingless, came to rest in the roots of the garden we planted; sudden swarms of dragonflies...
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2176117
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Your specific request that I never submit to you again; ever, is cause for puzzlement, yet strangely motivating.
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217630
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His movements were slowed by the metaphysical force of his own passing recollections, and he brushed from his face the silt he'd distrurbed on this forced descent.
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21761713
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I lean forward and take her two hands in mine. I look into her eyes. “It’s you and only you,” I say. She starts to cry.
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217573
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Ancient erections loom aloft
ringed by decades
centuries for some
in gnarled scabs of pine.
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21752318
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Five girls wobble into the train car. Their blistered feet protrude from the bedazzled straps of their sandals. Conductor: “Girls in the back with the open containers, you can't have those on the train.” A heavy-set girl in a belted yellow mini-dress…
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2175157
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I could call him. And be done with this waiting but I refused. I wanted him to not forget me first. To bring himself to remember me first before I'd give him the pleasure of my company.
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217541
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The boys finished their laps and returned to the center of the gym, Hamid shuffling up last, as usual. Amid the T-shirts and shorts, he wore faded blue slacks and a grubby, long sleeved dress shirt. He always dressed that way, even in gym class, as though
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217575
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That sort of says it all, doesn’t it?
The skirmish for truth must be fought early in the morning.
Lies happen later in the day.
Big lies occur in the night.
And this belongs directly on the surface of time as well:
Alleged shoplifter arrested
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217583
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Julie studied her brush, plucking a strand of hair from it. She looked up and smiled. "My mother thought you were a peeper."
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217452
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On some evenings, when I would sneak out of my room, I'd sit on the verandah and count the streetlights. I'd count the stars in the sky and trace the moon with the tip of my finger and consider how anyone could make it through the night when there were so
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217453
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You’ve gathered in church to wait for Jesus. Unarguable signs have let you know this is the day. This is the day of the second coming. This is Judgment Day.
It was a no-brainer to wait at the church.
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2174116
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He rounds his back to stretch again, circles his arms like a ballerina, settles into the couch cushion behind him. “We made plans. Real plans. New York City. Live like bohemians. Fuck like chinchillas.”
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217400
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August 14
I remember the smell of fresh air. The feeling of clean air in your lungs. I haven't had that feeling in quite some time now. I guess few people have.
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