THIS WEEK ON WORDSTORY: PUNCH

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THIS WEEK ON WORDSTORY:

Submit names for my future bag company!
Names must be feminine and sophisticated!
Delicate but powerful!
Graceful but assertive!

BASEMENT




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VANITY


Caravaggio, Narcissus

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(IN)FIDELITY


Jenny Holzer, "Protect Me From What I Want," New York City, 2002.

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GENES


Gel Electrophoresis of DNA

Send in your stories of genetic sequences and consequences.

"This photograph is my proof" by Duane Michals

PROOF

Send in your stories of finding and losing proof!

NEIGHBORS

Send in your stories of good neighbors, bad neighbors, fiascos and pranks!



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RECONCILIATION


Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, and Yasir Arafat: September 13, 1993


This week's word: RECONCILIATION. Send in your stories (written or audio!) of balancing the scales and making peace.


Consolation, by Wislawa Szymborska

Darwin.
They say he read novels to relax,
But only certain kinds:
nothing that ended unhappily.
If anything like that turned up,
enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not,
I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,
he’d had enough of dying species,
the triumphs of the strong over the weak,
the endless struggles to survive,
all doomed sooner or later.
He’d earned the right to happy endings,
at least in fiction
with its diminutions.

Hence the indispensable
silver lining,
the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,
the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,
fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,
stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways,
good names restored, greed daunted,
old maids married off to worthy parsons,
troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,
forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,
seducers scurrying to the altar,
orphans sheltered, widows comforted,
pride humbled, wounds healed over,
prodigal sons summoned home,
cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,
hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,
general merriment and celebration,
and the dog Fido,
gone astray in the first chapter,
turns up barking gladly
in the last.

FIRST




The Temptation of Adam and Eve, Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo


This week’s word: FIRST.

Stories about your first kiss, the first time you ate gelato, the first time you found money, the first grade, and the first time you knew you couldn't go back.