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A Body Divided: Memoir
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When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it broug
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What the heck to believe in??
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It's definitely not her pretty face that made him smile so quirkily when she returned in the evening.
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A bank bag now hung from those teeth—yellow-gray rancid, decaying teeth, strands of tobacco chew laced in between. Those thin pen mark lips could not hide the teeth’s keyhole spaces, shaped by open cavities—the bank bag hung from those teeth. The me
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I remember the man well, though he didn't notice me.Even though a million tiny things happened to cause his hand to brush me away from his neck, he didn't notice. Much like the way his eyes bounced off women's bodies as he hurried down the sidewalk in his blue wool…
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You don't just hear the sound, you are the sound, you and everyone else in the room.
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“What the hell kind of name is Angel? Who were you with before, some little girl?”
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When she awoke in her yard, she poured what was left of the rum into the dead grass. The man beside her lay with fingers curled, a claw she’d found wedged up her skirt when she woke. Tom, she said, his name nonsense, tongues. Might as well have been any
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Over fifty plastic flamingos stood silently at attention... as if eating sea urchins out of our lawn.
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Something about the Garden of Eden. That it isn't really a garden, and I'm not even sure what Eden means.
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That morning, four children appeared in front of the train, which was ready to depart
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Influenza Jones knew she was Moses. Reborn, of course, because the real Moses had been dead for longer than Influenza could remember. It didn’t matter that she was a woman and Moses was a man, she knew what her body say and her body say she be Moses. Sh
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Silent Murf was largely toothless, and the gaze from his eyes diverged in opposing directions; his skinny arms were a fancywork of jailhouse tattoos and what appeared to be scabbed-over claw marks.
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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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He sits on a folded-over cardboard box, slightly off-balance and without any visible sign of support other than the granite wall of the bank behind him and the few coins in the paper cup he shakes at each passerby.
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I made her a mix tape. It was revolutionary. Twenty-two songs she had to hear at least once in her life. I even drew some trippy drug-like designs on the label of the CD to make it seem more real. It was the ocean and the sun and every body of land balled up…
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"My Chi felt stimulated."
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Linus had it right with the security blanket he held like a beloved pet swan. Geneva had it all wrong with a pastel-colored music box, painted with impressionist-styled daisies and tied up in gold-ribbed pink bow. But it had come from her grandmother. Her
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Eighteen-layered canvases were prized by both of them, regardless of whose work appeared on top.
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“What about this shirt?” “I didn't know Gap had an ‘approaching middle age pimp' department.” “So… no?” “Yeah. No.” “Approaching middle age?” “So…” “So?” “Soooooo…”…
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We got this new group man--it's dynamite! I'm up front--no more bass--just front man--and this cat Jack on lead and Stokes the drummer and this outasight piano--he used to be with the Dead--
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In his mind, he could hear Eve’s voice, “We had some good times, didn’t we?”
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Lena jumps in Tungi’s ride, a busted Cutlass with chrome wheels and booming stereo. She hugs him, presses her chichis against his. He’s wearing too much cologne, but Lena’s glad he’s trying.
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But in the dust bunny there was an equally relentless and sneaky foe. A brilliant General that silently marshaled its troops under tables and chairs, in obscure, shadowy corners, and along the unsuspecting flat surface of things.
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She was legally blind. He felt comfortable knowing she couldn’t see him very clearly.
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Maria met her husband in World War Two. Maria is now eighty-two. She is from the country of Tuscany. She has lived in may countries. She was a war bride. She has a son. Maria's son is sixty-three. As a baby-boomer he won't retire until sixty-five Maria says.…
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“We’re prisoners,” Sean reminded the guard. “Prisoners of your military.”
“You have never been treated as such.” Captain Hughes looked around the bar. “This festival is a celebration of you, of all of you. We pride ourselves on ou
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Lifting a pear wedge to my lips, I hesitate and dip it into my bourbon instead. I notice a tiny sphere of liquid, suspended, glistening with the flame of the candle. The sweet, subtle scent tantalizes my senses. Careless, sticky fingers bring movement.…
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The walls of our shanty were of the standard corrugated rusty metal typical of communities like ours.We did our cooking over a Bunsen burner purloined from the Catholic Boys' School - beans mostly. We did our drinking from bottles of Thunderbird or Old Crow (when…
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This bumble-bee been following me around all day. Ever since I woke up, it's been with me. I just now smacked it to the ground and then it crawled on my bag and flew up to me again, zooming all around me; it's frightening me, a little. Bee…
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