2086 8 6
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Len and I sit on Harpo's porch, drink beer and gab. It's hot, even for July. Len and I joke and laugh, and Harpo stares off into the middle distance.
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2086198
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A discussion at the homeless colony under the expressway overpass crossing the river:
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208532
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20852713
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This is not a story you expect to end at Cape Horn.
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208543
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What you may see initially could be only half the poem. The rest is hidden.
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208501
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#1 MISCELLANEOUS NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
What kind of person would the author’s daughter, Gracie, become? That things didn’t look bright for her future was an understatement: Mother: alcoholic, dead at age 25 from puking her brains out; Father: m
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20851313
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Go ahead, boy, pout like a fool.
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20852618
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sooner or later you realize
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208410
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Forever
Implies
To my recycled soul
That it is achievable
If only I stretch myself
Towards it
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20843020
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Toting a sawed-off shotgun at the altar
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208400
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Tina saw a tear escape from beneath the frame of the man’s broken glasses. It followed the contour of his cheek until it quivered along his jaw line.
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208485
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I could love them all, your people, /
Learn their differences, speak their tongues, /
When there is no one there to hold you /
But me, my arms would be wide enough /
To hold armies of your need. Do not forget.
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2084148
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once she went to quenchthen she went to scrubnow she collects dead toadsgrinds them with cornmeal to feed her sowsonce she ploughed the land toiled with her face deep in dark soil her back burning in hot sunnow she works in the paper millmaking laminated labels for the…
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208422
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There are worse things than getting your ass kicked by a 12 year old Puerto Rican kid. This was exactly my thinking as he stood over me, his pre-pubescent screams sounding like a baby Bruce Lee, preparing to finish me off.
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20832118
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There can be no convergence./
There is only the talking that talks about/
an angle of sight nothing else can share.
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208363
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Danny said that you like him now. He smiled like it was the best news that he could give me, but his eyes dared me. …
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20831010
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Bob’s thoughts drift back to bird, the solitary creature in the field, dignified, unhurried, waiting. Bob wonders where he goes; surely he will move on when spring gives way to summer.
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208320
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A black wind raced ahead of the Merbreth and Juko could smell the thing's fur, matted with the blood of men. The coppery scent mingled with the fear coming off the men around him, a fear so palpable it became a tangible thing, something to be tripped over
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208201
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I cannot remember what the celebration was for, but the baby was at its center. We passed him around, a sweet smiling boy about seven months old. The age when babies can sit but can't yet crawl and their thighs get plump.
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2082109
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I hear the slightly scratched voice of Joan Baez coming from
the record player singing about the junipers in the pale moonlight,
applause erupting like hailstone on a corrugated iron roof.
I am singing back through the bedroom wall,
wishing the
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2082104
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Ma tells me not to put a tampon between my legs. For fear of cotton fornication.
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208264
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“I better go. My mom needs me at home,” she says. Soft. Smooth. Firm. Sweet. Maybe I’m pushing too hard. I kiss her on the cheek and she stiffens in response. My heart bleats.
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208233
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The white Styrofoam box sits on the prep station. It was delivered a few hours earlier. Half awake, I don a black apron and grab a large cutting board. To keep it from slipping, I put the cutting board on a damp towel laid…
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208198
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my father has a phobia of dentists./ he also once felt/ that if the house ran out of toilet paper/ he would lose his job.
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20813017
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It was a surprise they put me in a dormitory, not a cell,
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208192
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“Dad’s a dick,” my sister said. I nodded. He threw $20 on the candy counter for one small bag of popcorn and told the girl to keep the change.
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208140
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Remember me? I am the large, dented acorn you threw at your brother, Ken, during the huge acorn war of 1969. You were thirteen. He was eleven. And the entire neighborhood was in your backyard that day. Steve, Jack, Jerry, Tom, Dan, Jeff, Drew. A bunch of the kids…
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20812011
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...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...
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20811614
|
The psychiatrist was a man who clearly meant to calm his patients, the students. You could tell by his sweater and his neatly combed, plumy hair and the wire-rim glasses he wore. But he was not good at his job. You could tell this by how bad he was at cal
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208098
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Turns out it was you. But. You made it into the latest dumping ground in spite of their voted insults. In spite of being told you weren't even going to be around to be danced with. The loneliest girl now looks perfectly trim and trendy to all eyes.…
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