1978 10 8
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a mid-life crisis in 55 words
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197821
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After he’d told her on Friday that No, he wasn’t going to sign that contract for the cemetery plots she’d picked out—“I don’t want to spend my whole life knowing exactly where I’ll end up” is exactly what he’d said—the marriage, as far as she was concerne
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1977122
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...a blunt thrust of a face, uncongenial in profile, and the ubiquitous green cap that says John Deere, with the yellow ideogram of a deer for graduates of our local schools.
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19771915
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Our sons do nothing but drink and roar
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19771010
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Only the occasional kindness of a stranger,//
The curve of his back, a slope rushing past me,//
Is luminous, the coin pressed in my hand . . .////
And yes, I beg.////
I open my palm//
As Jesus did.//
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197755
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It seems the people of this house were a happy family – The smiling faces, the children’s enthusiasm tells me as much. I wonder what happened to them.
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197742
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“You buy shit, it’s gonna smell like shit,” he said. “You should’ve come to me like I told you and got a good deal with my nephew.”
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197721
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A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?”
“Do I know you?”
“It's Bill.”
The side of his little brother's thin face
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197763
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"Hattie? What are you doing?" Bosley asked, the quaver in his voice an indication of an impending erection.
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197600
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Soft voices in private, in the street,
city noise violence disappears
she blinks her eyelids
and I can hear the lashes
intertwine and pull clear.
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197694
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America has given birth to many great poets--Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Muhammad Ali--but why should talented people have all the fun?
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197684
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He ate husks of bone and old paper scraps with yesterday's headlines, blowing down the street like tumbleweeds now at four o'clock in the morning.He wrapped himself in an old army coat against the November winds as he tramped back and forth, back and forth, up the ten…
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197500
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Azure spent these years learning how to harness the four elements and find the four creatures that shackled her.
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197563
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Doc and I talked for several hours. When I told him Mona was pregnant, he turned his head and looked at me. “Who's the father?” he asked. Don't know, I said. Mona didn't know, either.
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19752010
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19751011
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the brand we like best and buy whether it's on sale or not. Surely there is another blue cheese dressing that is sold, possibly in San Francisco and made in a Berkeley basement by hippies who scrape together all of their change twice a year and buy cheese from an ancient…
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197500
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The man with the truncheon emerged at the monorail car's forward connecting doorway. One moment the space was vacant, a faux metal canvas for the dazzling sunlight streaming through a grime-encrusted window. When next Theseus Harrow looked up from his seat the dark-suited…
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19752011
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...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...
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197441
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Richard bounds up the stairs to his apartment. He can’t wait to get home to his new kitty. He found the poor cat right outside of his building just a few days ago, and already they’ve become fast friends.
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197461
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To my right, blank stares interchange with closed eyelids on an unkempt face. The minutes drip into the endless sea of night outside the window, each time creating a deeper blackness.
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197460
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“Actually, children, none of us will be having birthdays this year,” my father sighed.
“Not even me? Why?” asked Charlie.
"Son, this is what's known as a ‘one-party democracy."
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197432
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'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'
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1974138
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I had been in bed for a couple of days and by this I mean sleeping for fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. I don’t think that I believed in God anymore. I no longer knew how to stay awake.
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197352
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this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh
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19732114
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all paths converge on Africa/
and Eden, and the fall from animal grace
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1973199
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I remember the tan guinea pig, dead of dehydration. Through the wire bars of her cage I viewed her body. She lay stiff on her side, stretched out, as if in her guinea-pig dream she had been running through grassland, open and close to the sky.
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197301
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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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19732416
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I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.
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19731313
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Go ahead, boy, pout like a fool.
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197373
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Already, I can see that, whenever Harold moves, some of his soul escapes, like an accidental exhalation, like breath on powder.
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