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I. Waterloo, Iowa Towering clouds take me back to that summer. Endless days of blazing heat and claustrophobic humidity, colossal skies over relentless rows of corn and the ecstatic cacophony of crickets at twilight. Staccato bursts of heat lightning flash across muscular…
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420
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He awoke with a start. Unable to go back to sleep he lay there in the dark with his eyes open. The pit in his stomach, brought on by anxiety and grief, made him realize he'd been putting it off for too long. He arose from bed in the silvery glow of pre-dawn to attend…
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1253188
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She’s there, in a tin, loosely wound
beneath sepia tissue paper, a braid
to worry in your fingers.
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34200
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Then he told us tales of skulls and planks, galleons and parrots, silver and gold on crystal Jamaican seas under deep ruby skies.
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530
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Innocence Lying awake in the dark, way past bedtime on a school night. Transistor radio under the pillow, earpiece plugged in. My brother breathes softly in the bed next to me and his pet iguana Gunga Din rustles in its cage. The scent of lilacs wafts in through the open…
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13777
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Before I go to sleep at night I make sure to tag my big toe in case I pass away before daybreak and the undertakers come for my corpse. The cardboard is attached with a loop of baling twine, and if I had more courage I'd staple the tag…
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104721
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I was feeling a bit introspective. I was busy in my own mind assembling the history of the place and getting ready for the visit. I was naturally not someone who would cluster up with a bunch of people I had just met and had arrived to participate in this
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1343118
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The wind has no voice
and yet we listen,
perhaps imagining the ramblings
of a mad man
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107232
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To him the younger women, contemporaries of the bride, all sounded as if they were breathing helium.
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2911
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In childhood all the natural world was yours, leaves blowing across the town were tossed from branches for you, and what stuck to you from the earth or sky became part of you.
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11161711
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Each little token is the world/
as you knew it at each time and place
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9954
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Your headache is gone now, the pain peeled back by a barrage of alcohol and pills, the pine-scented perfume of yours wrapping me in love as I push aside branches and make my dogged way ahead of you.
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86812
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As a boy, he had little hope of ever becoming anything.
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108554
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hey, this is me who danced to the Doors
I thought I would surely dodge that bullet
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120186
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you hear the knell of kindness
long before its cathedral voices -- a recessional --
barters better times.
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