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These are the Things She Tried
On October 3, God sat in his white chair with a book suspended in front of him, a pen twirling between his fingers. Of both hands, because he’s ambidextrous. It’s Yom Kippur, a day scheduled for his Jewish constituents and he’s listening to the prayers filtering up through the clouds, up to his chair, and…
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The Twenty Years War
Duncan Nussbaum always had a feeling God was out to get him. When he was six years old, he was eating a cheese sandwich – this was back when his parents still kept kosher – and snatched a piece of salami off his brother’s plate, mixing it in his own, daring the Lord of Hosts…
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Poems
In fond memory of the Persian and Andalusian poets Dear, you are the hottest of all living men. Your eyes are brilliant as the puddle of oil in the parking lot, You caper like a plastic bag tumbling amid the cars. Your teeth are as rows of eggs in the carton, Your eyebrows are two…
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A Poem
I. The Commemoration of St. Malachy falls on November 3, so as not to conflict with the feast of All Souls. A prophet, Malachy extirpated barbarism from the Church. II. St. Malachy was named Abbot of Bangor in 1123. “That’s Ban-gor, not Banger, like banging someone,” my mother said as we drank Guinness in Groomsport.…
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The Addict’s Special Need
She could take exactly six-and-a-half steps from one end of the room to the other, and that’s considering she has really short strides.
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Jargon of Inauthenticity
Academia is awash with fifty dollar words that few can buy. Those terms, spoken in a certain style, presented in papers, at conferences, 4:30 lectures, were once music to my ears. Now all I hear is the caustic evasion of responsibility. Theoretical jargon has become the equivalent of fancy clothes, specialized watches, and fashionable parties…
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Anne
We have known each other for a long time, since we were four years old and living on the same block of brownstones in Brooklyn, going to ballet lessons at the Albee School of Dance, where our teacher Nana made odd, mime-like faces that were never quite comforting. I do not remember much of being…
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Erotomania and Castration Anxiety in USG President M. Margolin
Although I will perhaps be labeled as crude and sensational, I should like to turn the light of psychoanalysis on Mr. M. Margolin, the president of the Undergraduate Student Government.
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July 11, 2003: Ballymacash Burning
The night is an exercise in harmony, a lesson in primary colors: Billy, ten, clutches a bottle of WKD blue, rubs his fast-ruddying face. When he lifts his arm for posterity, the salute calls the flame to crawl down the torch, to consume what little arm hair he has before it moves on to the…
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No Refunds after Fifteen Minutes
I. Barrage of right-handed hooks: Jesus Christ is Lord over Greater Orlando paints diamond fence; tee-shirt on man with bulge reads God is Good; top of tower, a neon cross – God is Love intersects Christ is Savior at the is; If the world gives you challenges, make it an opportunity – sign on grass,…
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Taqueek’s Big Secret
Taqueek Runyan was an angry black youth in a town full of them. He was raised in a very religious household by “working class” parents, who—like most of the adults in the northern New Jersey area—were unemployed.
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One Word, One Heart
Walking through the offices of Clure Concept Inc., twenty stories above the throbbing midtown traffic of a Tuesday afternoon, the scene is typical. Phones purr behind cubicle walls, young execs file out of transparent conference rooms. These hurried sharp-lookers could be selling insurance or optical fibers, analyzing market data or brokering mergers.