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ISLAND FEVER
“It’s the difference between anthracite and lignite,” he said with a sort of all-knowing smirk. “Quite the contrary,” she snapped back “It’s the difference between pahoehoe and aa.” He clearly wasn’t pleased,” those examples are like night and day, and you’re in the dark.” “You can’t begin to tell between makai and mauka, but I…
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RIVER CROSSING
We crossed the Hudson this afternoon on a Dutch named bridge in a driving rain so strong you could hear little over the beat of the wipers throwing sheets of water. You wondered why the superstructure was only on the Eastern end. I wondered why they had to have a Dutch name no one can…
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MEMORY OF THE VINE
The conversation flows freely, piles up on the table, amid dishes from a meal now fully consumed, as the last of the wine reluctantly cedes its grip on the bottle and settles into the glasses. In Abruzzi, the vintner imagined this, staring at the grapes pulled lovingly from the now ancient vines. As night draws…
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FIRST PERIOD
They stand impatiently in line chattering, giggling, tittering like so many schoolgirls with secrets they promised to keep to their deaths and have to immediately tell a friend. “Did you hear about Letitia?” one says, and goes on to say she shared her journal with several other girls in the eighth grade. It goes on…
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FORGOTTEN PROCLAMATION
He was quite tall for then, even tall for now, and that hat must have added almost a foot, a mortician likely as not, if not a lawyer. He wrote eloquently, even if his voice was not quite of his stature, his words always had impact, digging in the gray and blue bled soil of…
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STARING
A crane stands placidly staring through the window as we earnestly attempt to imitate him, hoping he will honor the effort if not the result. The master is graceful and we are far less so, and out of the corner of my eye I see on the crane what could be a smile, or as…
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SAY WHAT?
The introductions were relaxed but complete as befits three people in a small room, she the linchpin knowing each of the others, utter strangers to each other, save in her stories. The men stared at each other gently ensuring the other saw only a smile for the better part of two minutes, basking in the…
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BELLY OF THE BEAST
From within the belly of the beast Sheol is a placid place, removed from the waves rattling the timbers, silent of the cries of the men berating their fate, uncertain as to the cause of their discomfort. Let Nineveh burn, lets its people scatter to the streets, let the King stare out at the destruction…
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ON THE BORDER
It always seems odd how the dual veils that separate day from night, wakefulness from sleep, seem impenetrable in the moment. Yet they both fade, now pellucid, permeable with the simple passage of time. Now dreams are a reality, such as that purports to be, and the worlds intermix, one ceding it to the other,…
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ASHES
When I die, my friend Larry said one morning in the third inning of a double header of stoop ball, I want to be burned, not that I intend it to happen any time soon, but when it does. They burned my grandfather I think it was Dachau, but unlike him, I want to kick…
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an old writer and his words 