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  • Bread Loaf Address

    * Like most people who sense that their love affair is going to pieces, Anna Karenina and Prince Vronsky try a few desperate measures to check the disintegration. One of these measures – available only to the upper classes – was travel. They go abroad, to Italy, and there they make the acquaintance of an…

  • Abusing the Confidence of a Child

         Several miles in the distance clouds of dust rose hundreds of feet in the air, marking the passage of the more than two hundred thousand pilgrims who were making their way deep into the phosphate-rich Spanish Sahara.      Frankie pulled her white illustrated T-shirt over her head and bared her firm young breasts to the onslaught…

  • Mary Lavin: A Note

    "Like a rock in the sea, she was islanded by fields, the heavy grass washing about the house, and the cattle wading in it as in water. Even their gentle stirrings were a loss when they moved away at evening to the shelter of the woods. A rainy day might strike a wet flash from…

  • Feebleness of Hands

         The past has left its mark on you.      One Saturday afternoon you and a number of other people went for a ride on Lake Erie in a friend’s new boat. It was cold and overcast and the boat began to fall to pieces several miles from shore. The builder had obviously not put it together…

  • Case History; A Sestina

    I feel that I should introduce myself. I am X, a not very unusual person, A rather ordinary specimen of human life. At the moment I feel that I serve no purpose, Which is why I am here—I want to feel useful. Also, I find mental hospitals interesting. And I do hope you will find…

  • A House to Let

    `Over there, Bart, on the other side of the street,' Ella said, pointing to a vacant house, its uncurtained windows pasted with placards. It was an evening in early spring and they were strolling back along Rathmines Road in the last of the light, going towards Ella's house, which was just off the main road….

  • The Hypochondriac

    A lump in your groin. A burning in your discharge. You cannot quit the cigarettes or the entire nights spent refining the pointless game of billiards. Setting the smoke of drugs adrift on the afternoon light, you salvage up a time perhaps when spring made a car look great and mascaraed girls from the lunchroom…