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But that last night in Europe, getting ready to fly out of Amsterdam back to the States, I heard this Phil Collins song, “In the Air Tonight,” which expressed some of the turmoil and confusion and whole-life hysteria I was feeling inside. Waves of fru
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He draped the sheet over her body. Blood spotted the fabric, rose petals on snow.He left the pistol, but pocketed the first edition she'd signed. Part of his fee.In the park, he ditched the glasses, fake mustache, and anorak before making the call.The publisher called an…
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And out on that lake that day you yelled “desperation please!”
And I heard “desperate pleas?”
I wondered about first impressions.
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It might not seem easy to breathe any love into a name like Father. It’s a stiff word—it’s not soft, like, say, Papa—but sometimes you have to breathe love into names you don’t choose.
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You turned to the beautiful youth because we were light, because we were so full of life that our skin alone could not seem to contain us. We were burning on all sides for the world. Shade, shadow — nothing. Nothing the moon. You lifted the cloth and peer
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We can’t see anything except for glimpses of the other’s eyes, hands, mouths when we move.
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Marvin and first had met four years ago on an iron train peeling through the seething Asian night on rails between Bangkok and Chiang Mai city...
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After Loretta McKinley had sat for just such a time on a rock near the tribe, hallucinating and coming as close to death and God as she ever had, she walked into the camp and asked to speak with the elders.
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. . . I wanted to put Tiffany out of her misery and mine and shove her in front of the next large vehicle hurtling down the drive-through lane . . . .
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In the vaultwhere no one had daredsince your first stillborn screamsI swept out your deadThe gnawing thingsboneless and dustyand stinking of churchesYou came to me thenand I took youthere in the shadowsunder the tree on the grassnear the reeds by the lakeI dived in your…
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“And what kind of man would prefer all these dusty old books to my physical form? Who would memorize archaic incantations, when he could be whispering in my ear? Why search for the ancient splendors of metaphor, when one could be searching for the ...
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When people talk about the end moments when one's life flashes before his or her eyes, they often refer to time as slowing down. I can attest to this phenomenon during my final moments, before the collision: the song playing on the radio, the squeal of tires and flash of…
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On my second trip home from the University of Illinois down state in Urbana, it was during our break between semesters, I remember it was a particularly freezing cold and miserable January (1963.) I had a date with Lynda.
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Down the concrete stairs I slinked, past some fur coat wearing tosser and his braying equine girlthing, and pushed my way into the eardrum puncturing furnace of the place.
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The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The rain comes down in sheets.
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In 1609 Ben Jonson was hired to write a work in celebration of the opening of a new shopping mall.
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Her smile was a cliff I stood on, trying to wrangle some kind of hope from the whites of her teeth. I heard the sound of the buzzer from the door on my ward. She stood there, a sickly ash tree, each limb flailing about like she was drowning in my sea of a
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Contemporary persecution of Christians takes on milder forms of torture like having to explain away something Pat Robertson said, or constantly having to hear about Fred Phelps picketing funerals because he happens to hate homosexuals.
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“Emma,” I said, “will you quit staring?
What about the meatpacker’s hope for his daughter?”
I asked. “Have you even thought about that?”
“Once you get off the moon, maybe,” she said
“Honestly, after so much lamb and schwarma
I could go for a
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. . . making a little winter-love, in a dark corner.
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They’re exhuming Pablo Neruda
To put his old bones to the test
Determine if he was murdered
At the Capitalists’ request.
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The perfect murder, and it’s not even murder.
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It matters little who thought of it first, what mattered was the schism. Or, to be more accurate, those on the opposite sides of the schism. And, of course, you are a part of this, dear reader. You are of one side or the other.
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The boy had decided he needed to sell his music equipment—the p.a. system, his amp, his compact organ. His band had broken up and wasn’t going to get back together. He was leaving town at the end of the summer, to where exactly he didn’t know yet.
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A young woman is seated center stage. She is pretty, dressed in a short nightgown. She sits nervously, her body tense and expectant.
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- Do you get out much, Professor?
- How so? You mean to lectures?
- No, I mean, you know, say, a walk in the park, or, take in a movie, or, maybe take a chick out to dinner, show her a good time, get a few drink
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"The Genius has since abandoned all hope of seeing full remission of the Great Descending Haze in his lifetime."
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You never forget your first mouthful of monkey stew.
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