Ben East Books

Tag: Relationships

  • Letter from College

    Letter from College

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    Ben East
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    You know you’re welcome any time. It will be fun to show you around, introduce you to my friends, and eat lunch with you in the cafeteria.

  • Infidelities for Valentine’s Day

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    Ben East
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    It’s just like Michael Hemmingson to be gone. Just when I wanted to thank him for his black Valentine’s Day messages. There’s a world of hurt in his collection Pictures of Houses with Water Damage (Black Lawrence Press, 2010). It’s a numbed kind of hurt, the kind of pain felt after a breakup, whether you wanted to…

  • To Bleed or Not to Bleed–(the Writer’s Question)

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    Ben East
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    I don’t plan on writing porn any time soon. Probably never. But this article from today’s New York Times Magazine, about the life of one prolific pornographer, had me thinking about what I write and how I write it. The piece helped me calibrate the struggle against my greatest bane: The lack of time. I’m a career man with a job…

  • CURRY PATTA, JUNGLE OATS, AND PEACE CORPS

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    Ben East
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    My wife keeps a curry plant to flavor her beautiful Indian cooking. Our boys have taken to snapping off the greenest leaves and eating them raw. Their chewing fills the air with a sharp, fresh scent. Yesterday, the plant was brought indoors—frost—to spend the night on our low kitchen table. When the boys found it…

  • Post Season Baseball–Guts

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    Ben East
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    To kick off Major League Baseball’s season of glory: a short story about baseball featuring steroids, breast milk, and courage. From Guts, first published by Atticus Review September 2012. That sweet curving thumb of mine put a wild spin on every ball I threw. Curveballs, sliders, pitches that dropped four inches just before the plate. Northern…

  • GUTS

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    Ben East
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    George craves the syringe with an addict’s distress. I have one thumb on the plunger. I put the other in his mouth. The plastic syringe tip curves along my crooked thumb between George’s lips. I press the plunger carefully and let the milk flow.The ruddy face of Senator Teflon–that’s my name for him–fills the television. He…