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Middle-aged people shrink, crease, fade, and, if they’re lucky, slowly lose the desire to be noticed, the way we once lost our childhood taste for Necco Wafers or Pez. My desire to be seen is gradually being replaced by the desire to see: the faces of those I love, the cardinal in the bush, the socks of the woman with MS who swims at the Y.
By Genie ZeigerJuly 2005Her eyes were hard. I knew then that she was going to be relentless and wouldn’t give up until I acknowledged the truth.
By Michelle Cacho-NegreteApril 2005The phone rings during dinner. The break in the silence is a relief, but I don’t move. In fact, I pretend I don’t even hear it. I’m fifteen and angry at my father for making me stay home again on a Friday night. He pretends not to hear the phone either.
By Emily RinkemaMarch 2005Keith had had a plenty rough day, most of it spent with his girlfriend, Bonnie, in an abortion clinic just outside of Pittsburgh. You could see how frayed he was: skinny as hell and that big head of electrocuted hair, smoking one cigarette after another, the blue veins in his forehead like hot wires about to rupture.
By Joseph BathantiFebruary 2005Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, family members, Wonder Woman
By Our ReadersJanuary 2005My stomach lurched because I realized that Carl looked like his father, and therefore would not become handsome. He would never escape the prison of his ugliness. I hated Mr. Leach for destroying the beauty of Carl’s face for me.
By Theresa WilliamsJanuary 2005Frost’s Original Letter Writer, a box of cassette tapes, a sealed letter
By Our ReadersDecember 2004For about ten months I worked at a radio-antenna factory in the tiny town of Hays, Kansas. The factory workforce was comprised mainly of the inexperienced, the handicapped, the socially discarded, the desperate, the just-out-of-jail, and the fallen-to-the-bottom-of-the-ladder, with a handful of cheerful, non-English-speaking Mexicans thrown in.
By Poe BallantineSeptember 2004April 2004Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?
Philip Roth
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