Stories tagged chicago

Raw

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Chicago. Recent. The nineties that we thought would bring so much more. The day was raw. Well, rawer than it should have been, anyway. And I'm not talking about chill or heat,…

In the Hole

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In the summer of 1995, I found an old photograph of my father and his third wife in a shoebox under my bed. That started the whole thing. I think it was taken around the time I severed ties with him; his new wife had mailed it to me, she…

The Last Man to Ever Let You Down

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Jefferson pulled the lever and the back-hoe dug deep into the earth; the machine creaked and bucked, fighting soil hard-baked by two months of record heat. They liked the holes six feet deep by ten feet wide, just like in Georgia, but this…

It's Next Door

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The old lady from next door had been really quiet for a few days. She was hardly noticeable, but I was starting to wonder. Chicago had been deadly hot and a lot of old folks had died already. "You think I should check on our neighbor?" "Did you find out if we're…

The Bridge Between Angry Streets

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The streets are fast, and they are hard; for anyone, right down to the insects who are unwittingly sentenced to a hard surface hell.

Appreciating Her Situation Uniquely

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She walked briskly on near desolate downtown streets past ads bursting shamelessly from walls, buses, newspapers, parked cabs, pretty soon, she thought, the entire world would be ads: ads ads everywhere, the Mona Lisa drinking a Diet Coke, the Vietnam Mem

Someplace Else

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95th street is the biggest cocktease in the whole fucking city, Finnegan thought to himself while he lay awake on his sweat-stained sheets listening to the strained wheezings of his grandma’s oxygen tank in the next room, drowned out intermittently by the

From Midway To Halsted

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You don’t see me. You can’t see me. It’s too dark. No one sees me (sees me); no one can seize me, and if they seize me it’ll take some C-notes to retrieve me. I’m unstoppable.

Personal Geography

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Olive has decided that Chicago is the answer. It was a reaction mistaken for a decision that her mind made up. In preparation for the move, she has refused to live in her own time zone for the past two months and quit her job. She gets hungry at ten and t

Qalb elouz

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The sweetness turns your tongue inside out, and the texture of the cake on your inside-out tongue makes you feel all at once like you're in love, and like you're a child again.

Attempting Integration, Duchamp Descends to the Killing Floor

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Slice the moment into/ free body diagrams/ of elegant simplicity

...is closed

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… is closed Now Drake Hughes was a swell welcoming manAnd Ann, his wife, had Freudian issuesOne day by the well with knife and a planAnn, sweet-sweet Ann, became sweet widow Hughes.Now Drake was a fake, but a welcoming guyHis…

Golden State

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The first door on the right is the bedroom. Even if I try to forget; my body remembers and the strength of its yearning fairly pulls me inside. I noticed you left the door ajar. Really you should be more careful.

The Field House

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The bodies were scattered across the Loyola Park athletic field house grounds. Some of the victims were on stretchers or backboards. Thick smoke swirled in front of the field house and out over the two softball fields toward the playground, the beach and

The Night Madison Brooke Burned Alive

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She told me it had been there since she was a kid, this large black spot like a blimp floating from her right arm up to the tip of her neck. She had really pale skin so she kinda looked like a cow strutting down the street.