1071 3 2
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To conceive of them separated was unthinkable to every wet-eyed soul at the burial.
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82022
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His name was Gino. I’ll leave out the last name, not that I think it matters anymore. He came into my dad’s gas station on the near North side of Chicago to have work done on his fancy car. I was still a teenager. I accidentally opened the glove compartme
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105532
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"May I help you?"
She was beautiful.
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152632
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Teaching never occurred to me in college. I took workshops and wrote often. Friends and classmates, meanwhile, switched from studio majors to Art Education, or from English to Certification. Not me. Teaching high-schoolers would be all wrong. Briefly, I…
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101932
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I’m sorry. We couldn’t fix the country
and left her a bigger mess than we found her
Oil leaking from her shores
earthquake batter all over her skin
We couldn’t fix her, and we’re sorry
You’ll find her wreck in tatters
at the bus st
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99422
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The boy in the elevator with round glasses, /
who carried a newly-purchased broom, /
was tall and burdened with clothes
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103040
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Sometimes I think there's an octopus in my stomach. In the mornings it stretches and droops its lazy head to one side — It suctions it's tentacles to the walls of my belly and pulls them together forcing me To gag, and vomit what we didn't digest of the…
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127632
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“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.
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110231
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Little Roy Farrell'd taken a bite of his fourth grade teacher's ear as she bent close to help him sound out the word “grace.” Doc Felter had sewn most of teacher's ear back on, but by seventh grade Roy still couldn't read and never understood that he'd in
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107621
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In the living room of a model home, Mr. Jorgensen lived. He was a mannequin. He spent his days in display windows. He spent his commutes displaying the latest model cars.
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110812
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If it weren't for the different lengths of dock, I would think the river just goes past me. Maybe it does, and the banks move too. Orderly where the clouds are random. I have cormorants, passengers, and salmon. They catch each other. They make my crew money. When did my…
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105531
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Though his heart aches
his melody seems to flow
It creeps into the dreams
of all in slumber in the valley below
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89522
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The space they are in is years long.
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98812
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The world is always changing, even if it's in several eras at once.
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133332
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He asked me if I was going to buy Valentine's for the office this year, and I shook my head. We were in the dollar store, February 13, and I could get a box of twenty kids' Valentines with last year's favourite cartoon…
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118141
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70721
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Just an abnormal visit to the post office.
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149442
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Martin named it “Squishy” for two reasons. The first reason was because it was the noise it made when it came out of the hole in his basement. The second is because it’s what it did to Grandfather...
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1075120
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Your son is six feet tall in the sixth grade. By his sophomore year of high school, he outweighs you by a hundred pounds. He's been offered four football scholarships and one for a sport he's never played. Every morning his mother, your ex ex-wife, makes his breakfast of a…
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110541
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CALENTURE The horizon is marked with the still sculptures of dead gulls; A young man floats off slowly on the…
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108522
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You are rounded just the way the mountain is, out the window. The sun sets on both of you now. Three of you, I should say: the mountain, and you, and little Frank, who is currently batting my ear because he doesn't want to be named Frank but it's for your dead father,…
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124732
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Von Meckel had us all go out and paint this huge red square around the Red Diaper Baby factory. Then he held a big naming rally, at noon, during our lunch break. We weren’t allowed to eat our sandwiches. There was all this pomp and circumstance. We were
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101732
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Palinode: A poem written to retract something said in a prior poem.
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134621
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-No, just drugged, I remind myself. The hallucinations are more real, more accurate than before. While the dreams get more nightmarish, the hallucinations get more nostalgic. I prefer the nightmares. No one knows if this treatment will work, but what bett
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95831
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442101
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We weren't sleeping much, either one of us. We went through the ritual, Pat and I. I brushed and flossed and got into bed and read while Pat took her contacts out and applied a…
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116122
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There is a roofer straddling part of our house, pushing shingles off of our roof with the edge of a shovel. …. I've thought seriously, at times, about becoming a nurse. Seeing your mother in a hospital bed, hooked up to a tube, more than one, too…
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124722
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“The window is a much better place to read,” she said.I wasn't aware she was talking to me, at first. In my typical manner, I was thinking about far off possibilities and realities completely detached from my own. Yet, here she was, a far off…
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168970
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[TURN-ONS: willingness. TURN-OFFS: rejection.]
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126611
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He introduced himself as Jimmy Stamps and shook my hand with the confidence of a man who is Microsoft Windows certified. Reeking of vodka and Swisher Sweets he proceeded to expatiate on the virtues of X
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