1982 10 8
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a mid-life crisis in 55 words
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198232
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'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'
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198242
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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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19811915
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Our sons do nothing but drink and roar
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198100
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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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19811010
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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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198132
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...and 55 words to tell you about it.
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19812010
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1981127
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I am a romantic writer, true. But what comes after the romance is what fascinates me. A lover dying is the most beautiful scene I want to write. The most beautiful scene I have yet to write.
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19801011
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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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19801313
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Go ahead, boy, pout like a fool.
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198084
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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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197994
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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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197911
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May as well have lived two lives, he thinks: one before memory and one after. And how can you remember someone else's life? You can't. After forty years of living, he realizes that there's no way of knowing what his own eyes have witnessed.
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197960
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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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197955
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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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197921
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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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19792011
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...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...
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197963
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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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1979138
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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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1978122
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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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197761
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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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19771914
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I'm sitting here listening to Nebraska and it's / breaking my heart
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197786
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no one else comes in my back door but you
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1977119
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I’ve had my face talked off by those types (and I’m sure you’ve met a few) who need to say and hear “special” words, and they go "unh-hunh, unh-hunh, o yeah, o yeah, unh hunh."
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197652
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this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh
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197699
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I'm not interested in her that way.
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19762114
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all paths converge on Africa/
and Eden, and the fall from animal grace
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197600
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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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197641
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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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