1995 10 10
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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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19952416
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I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.
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199511
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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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19951313
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Go ahead, boy, pout like a fool.
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199500
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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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199522
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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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199585
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On his last day of high school Jackie York woke up to the smell of burning books. He didn't know it was his last day of high school. He did know the smoke coming through his rusty window screen was book smoke.
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1994255
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" Not a day goes by/ that isn't stabbed with common sorrow"--Maurice Manning Crazy's alright by me if it's a harmless plea for some little sanity, or unavoidable by birth but it just won't do for tricks. Like say I go over there right…
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199483
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199464
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Sophie is a cat. I tell you this upfront so as not to get you all wound up about moral angst, Nazi's or a mother's love.
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199421
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When I glance at the bedside clock I realize that we have been making love in one way or another for nearly three hours now. I am filled with a certain secret smugness that I am still going strong. It has been a long time since I’ve done anything quite li
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199482
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My dad drove a Model A Roadster
and had a photo taken of him on a hunting trip up in Wisconsin
with one leather boot up on the running board
and a .22 caliber pistol in his hand
like Ernest Hemingway and Clark Gable rolled into one
My dad ro
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19931915
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Our sons do nothing but drink and roar
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19932010
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199340
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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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199355
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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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1993127
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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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199384
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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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199299
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I'm not interested in her that way.
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199200
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199200
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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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1992108
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a mid-life crisis in 55 words
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19922011
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...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...
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199250
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once wedding cake
under pillows.
now fluffy frosting
on squashed defeat
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19911914
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I'm sitting here listening to Nebraska and it's / breaking my heart
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199120
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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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1991168
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He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.
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199058
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Mama hung them everywhere. It started with just a few, in our apartment and outside on the brick. She made walls into windows.
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19902118
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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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199000
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The morbidity of red ink is almost entirely lost on the playfulness of Snoopy stationary. But I boldly pressed on with my darkest thoughts to strengthen the effort of my offbeat creative exercise.
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