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Fiction
O Marie, Çoncue Sans Pêché
On my calendar there aren’t any more social engagements or shrink appointments or movies to catch up on. It says here: “Monday. Get up. Eat. Floss teeth. Go to bed by 10:00.”
October 1981What You Worship
How the dog felt about the canary I can describe in no other way: she worshipped it. How else would you explain her devotion? Fascination, perhaps? All right. But worship, at least in part, is fascination taken to its extreme. I leave it to you to judge if this wasn’t an extreme case.
September 1981Birdseye
We know something at the same time — we need to get out quick, Hal is already out, and Chuck is out on the other side, Anne and I are scrambling out, then we’re in the middle of the road in a little group, all looking at the illuminated bird. As the bird stands still in the air, I get an old ecstatic feeling of being overcome.
August 1981Three Stories
Harmal believed that the doorway to his house was a symbol of both birth and death, as those who walked into the house through the doorway were born into the world of Harmal’s house, while those who walked out were dead to that world.
August 1981Impetus
They dragged him to a pit and cast him in and he was left there to watch dawn turn to dusk every day for 98 rounds of the earth’s turning, mentally circulating all possible excuses why nothing ever got done until finally all rationalization sickened him.
August 1981Mental Basketball
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to WYOY’s Mental-Basketball Game of the Week. Today’s contest pits mind against matter for the championship of Western Civilization. The winner here will meet the Eastern Civilization Champion to ultimately determine who will oppose the forces of nature in the Fourth Dimension.
July 1981Thursday
“You done me wrong,” and his voice is full of all the stars in the universe and all the dreams of love that are snuffed out like an annoying candle still burning downstairs at bedtime.
May 1981David Kemsmier: Scenes From Childhood
Many families possess tales of their occasional flirtations with opulence. Ours concerns Great Grandpa Kemsmier. Short of cash, he decided to sell his small matzoh business. The new management expanded into wines and other kosher delicacies — changing the company name to Manischewitz.
April 1981English Lessons
“Oh.” I couldn’t bring myself to say it — not yet. But she knew I’d understood and continued cheerfully. “Sometime we dig, we find a body — a hand, a foot. One student find pop — then he buried there, too.”
April 1981How Things Came Into Existence
Once on a time long ago in that part of the present that is hidden from general view and which lies in the unreachable future, there were two, only two beings. Where they came from I have no idea and probably they didn’t either. Who could have told them? But I am certain that they were named Mr. Nous and Mme. Ordinat.
March 1981
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