2255 25 17
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I put my mouth to it and said hello hello hello.
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26481615
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A wrinkled old woman sat at the table next to me. “Are you a writer?” she asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Are you Jewish?”
“No, I’m not,” I replied.
“Where do you come from?” she asked in her broken English.
“Chicago,” I said. “The Bohemian ghetto there, o
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24514127
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In the present moment, she is there for you. Faithful.
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21683929
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He looks in silence and he looks with longing.
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21915325
|
The Trinity boys don’t blame me at all. They know I am not stupid about the world. I am a robust girl. Nevertheless, like everyone else I have limits. I am a clock that winds down.
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24725021
|
She was a big woman, a massive, misshapen tree of a woman, wrapped in a rain-coat the size of a tent. She wore a cap on her head, its beak peeking out, drops of rain slipping of its edge like so many pieces of transparent candy.
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46193118
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He didn’t hug me. He didn’t hug any of us. Instead, he shook my hand, his grip so firm I felt the bones of my hands crumbling in on themselves.
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18532317
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Death came to my street, but I did not invite him.
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2358119
|
I heard an old Stevie Ray Vaughn tune this morning. It triggered a flash back. It’s funny how just a few notes of a song can slam me right into a memory. A total and complete immersion. Sights. Sounds. Smells. The people. The place. The weather. Wha
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21722121
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"... you shake your head and look down as if I am a mongrel dog who has pissed the Tabriz..."
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33345526
|
This is what I do for a living: I unpack sentences.
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24503319
|
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27653626
|
All carcinoma/
would be hors d’oeuvres/
for its dark appetite.
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23802121
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Theresa stopped speaking to me because I ate cows. This made things simple. There was no conversation.
|
33834123
|
I really detest dating that leads to sex=ownership or to the expectation of it. The men are so quietly demanding, authoritarian, pushy. Who are these nice fuckers? Strays a'hounding. I want to tell them: I have friends, real friends with art agendas.
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37051630
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Cahill—Dr. Cahill to those who knew him in his small town in Maine—had decided that his screened porch should be relocated. Wouldn't it be better to winterize the current porch, adding a door at the far end which would lead to a new, smaller porch,…
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19752912
|
When I walked into the local police precinct to meet with a detective about the scope of my rights, I was thinking about Rocco, the adored dog of a long-ago life.
|
26473623
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I am everything she wanted me to be. I am crossed legs, chest out; I am wearing a soft white dress—lacy and completely inappropriate to the Midwest, to 2011, to anything about my existence.
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20414226
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She drove me to radiation, to acupuncture and support group. She brewed me concoctions that smelled of twigs and dirt...
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3391106
|
When I was young, my mother told me that J. Edgar Hoover was a homosexual. I don't remember exactly when or why she shared this tidbit with me. This was, after all, fifty years ago. But Mom wasn't a homophobe, so I'm guessing that what intrigued her about Hoover's…
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18773526
|
On Friday nights I'm not there.
|
31983915
|
"It's what being out of work does to you, " she said, with that innocent sense of the everyday tragic, that kind murmur.
|
18135619
|
An ice block heart
rushed home to the beat of its melt.
|
34241817
|
Sex when you’re pregnant
Is like sex when you aren’t
Pregnant, but with extra people.
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29635323
|
"Oh, damn,” I say. “A kitty.”
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24366425
|
He’d kept the parking space open. She used it most often, whenever she and her husband, an old drinking buddy, came to visit.
|
11084128
|
She pulled into the doorway. Uncertain where to spend the night. Certain there'd once been a place with food. Here. This place. She remembered. Curtains. Small tables. Coffee cups thick-handled and sturdy. Crockery.
Some words came back.
|
24855326
|
"Look," he said. "Look at the knife. See how I hold it?"
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16542716
|
|
20325027
|
He lit a slim, brown cigarette and drew on it. "But have you heard the flugelhorn? I mean, have you heard a particularly adept flugelhorn?"
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