---
title: Appendix F
subtitle: index of first lines
id: first-lines
genre: prose

project:
    title: Appendices
    class: appendices
    next:
    - title: Index of hapax legomena
      link: hapax
    prev:
    - title: Index of common titles
      link: common-titles
...

[He was born on a few separate occasions                              _green traffic lights at night_](about-the-author.html)
[Case Duckworth is the cowardly but lovable Great Dane who solves mysteries on TV.](about_author.html)
[Lost things have a way of staying lost.](amber-alert.html)
[And you were there at the start of it all](and.html)
[Abraham, Abraham, you are old and cannot hear:](angeltoabraham.html)
[So it's the fucking moon.  Big deal.  As if](apollo11.html)
[Paul was writing in his diary about art.](art.html)
[Paul took his axe and went out into the woods to chop trees.](axe.html)
[After searching for days or even months](big-dipper.html)
[Now the ticking clocks scare me.](boar.html)
[When he said Bible I heard his southern accent](boy_bus.html)
[_ART and CRAFT are only the inside and outside of the same building._](building.html)
[Like _40_ as I challenge anyone to come too!](call-me-aural-pleasure.html)
[He woke up after eleven and didn't go outside all day, not even to his Writing Shack.](cereal.html)
[Man of autumn, cold wind,](cold-wind.html)
[`tr` has been a part of the Unix toolset since the late 70s.](collage-instrument.html)
[So two hyperintelligent pandimensional beings](creation-myth.html)
[The dead man finds his way into our hearts](deadman.html)
[When I think of death I think](death-zone.html)
[He didn't have any polish so he spit-shined the whole thing](deathstrumpet.html)
[I turned off the TV as soon as the end credits began.](dollywood.html)
[It had gotten cold.](dream.html)
[_YOU CANNOT DISCOVER ART ART MUST BE CREATED_ he sat on the couch at home while his mother watched TV and smoked.](early.html)
[Say there are no words.  Say that we are conjoined](elegyforanalternateself.html)
[Bottom of the drink: they had](ex-machina.html)
[I didn't write this sestina yesterday.](exasperated.html)
["Is man the natural thing that makes unnatural things" he thought to himself as he looked out the kitchen window at the shed.](father.html)
[You never can tell just when Charlie Sheen will enter your life.](feedingtheraven.html)
[Tonight, as I look up, the stars](finding-the-lion.html)
[His mother ran out of the house in her nightgown.](fire.html)
[Look, I say---look here---](found-typewriter-poem.html)
[He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing.](hands.html)
[You think building Hoggle's a hard game?](hard-game.html)
[His mother drove him to the Hardware Store on a Tuesday.](hardware.html)
[I was away on vacation when I heard---](howithappened.html)
[_It's all jokes_ Paul wrote in what he was now calling his Hymnal.](hymnal.html)
[I am a great pillar of white smoke.](i-am.html)
[I thought I saw you walking](i-think-its-you.html)
[I want to say I take it all back](i-want-to-say.html)
[I wanted to tell you something in order to](i-wanted-to-tell-you-something.html)
[I hear the rats run](in-bed.html)
[There is a theory which states the Universe](initial-conditions.html)
[January.](january.html)
[He wrote _**JOKES**_ on the top of a page in his notebook.](joke.html)
[Walter rides the bus into work on Wednesday morning when he realizes, with the force and surprise of a rogue current, that he is in the home-for-death phase of life.](lappel-du-vide.html)
[What secrets does it hold?](largest-asteroid.html)
[Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle](last-bastion.html)
[Memory works strangely, spooling its thread](last-passenger.html)
[He shrugged the wood off his shoulder, letting it fall with a clog onto the earth floor of his Writing Shack.](leaf.html)
[His first chair was a stool.](leg.html)
[The definition of happiness is *doing stuff that you really like*.](likingthings.html)
[If you swallow hard enough](listen.html)
[God is love, they say, but there is](love-as-god.html)
[Walking along in the dark is a good way to begin a song.](lovesong.html)
[_THIS MAN REFUSED TO OPEN HIS EYES_](man.html)
[The moon is drowning the stars it pushes them](moon-drowning.html)
[The moon is gone and in its place a mirror.](moongone.html)
[The other side of this mountain](mountain.html)
[A dog moving sideways is sick; a man moving sideways is drunk.](movingsideways.html)
[Silence lies underneath us all in the same way](music-433.html)
[While swimming in the river](no-nothing.html)
[Paul began typing on notecards.](notes.html)
[Nothing is ever over; nothing](nothing-is-ever-over.html)
[Whenever you call me friend](one-hundred-lines.html)
[I think that I could write formal poems](onformalpoetry.html)
[What did he do when he was in the woods?](options.html)
[He said at the beginning, "It's like rolling yarn into a too-small ball.](ouroboros_memory.html)
[CONTENTS OF THE SHED](paul.html)
["My anger is like a peach," he said.](peaches.html)
[Importance is important.](philosophy.html)
["Hello Paul this is Jill Jill Noe remember me" the voice on the phone was a woman's.](phone.html)
[EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING](planks.html)
[I need a plant.  I need a thing](plant.html)
[I'm writing this now because I have to.](poetry-time.html)
[Of course, there is a God.](prelude.html)
[The problem with people is this: we cannot be happy.](problems.html)
[Nothing matters; everything is sacred.](proverbs.html)
[When he finally got back to work he was surprised they threw him a party.](punch.html)
[Okay, so as we said in the Prelude, there either is or isn't a God.](purpose-dogs.html)
["Do you have to say your thoughts out loud for them to mean anything" Paul asked Jill on his first coffee break at work.](question.html)
[Sometimes I feel as though I am not a real writer.](real-writer.html)
["Paul, you can't turn in your reports on four-by-six notecards" Jill told him after he handed her his reports, typed carefully on twelve four-by-six notecards.](reports.html)
[Inside of my memory, the poem is another memory.](riptide_memory.html)
[When Ronald McDonald takes off his striped shirt,](ronaldmcdonald.html)
[I lost my hands & knit replacement ones](roughgloves.html)
[He chopped down a sapling pine tree and looked at his watch.](sapling.html)
[On your desk I set a tangerine:](seasonal-affective-disorder.html)
[I only write poems on the bus anymore.](sense-of-it.html)
[The self is a serengeti](serengeti.html)
["What do you do all day in that shed out back" his mother asked one night while they ate dinner in front of the TV.](shed.html)
[He builds a ship as if it were the last thing](shipwright.html)
[If Justin Bieber isn't going for the sixteenth](sixteenth-chapel.html)
[_I don't care if they burn_ he wrote on his last blank notecard.](snow.html)
[in mammals the ratio between bladder size](something-simple.html)
[My body is attached to your body by a thin spittle of thought.](spittle.html)
[He is so full in himself:](squirrel.html)
["Riding the bus to work is a good way to think or to read" Paul thought to himself on the bus ride to work.](stagnant.html)
["Can one truly describe an emotion?"  Eli asked me over the walkie-talkie.](statements-frag.html)
[It was a gamble](stayed-on-the-bus.html)
[He walked into the woods for the first time in months.](stump.html)
[This poem is dry like chapped lips.](swansong-alt.html)
[Swans fly overhead singing goodbye](swansong.html)
[EVERYTHING CHANGES OR EVERYTHING STAYS THE SAME](swear.html)
[ 4. The look she gave me                  4. Half-hours in heaven are three times](table_contents.html)
[_Apparently typewriters need ribbon._](tapestry.html)
[It was one of those nameless gray buildings that could be seen from the street only if Larry craned his neck to almost vertical.](telemarketer.html)
[My head is full of fire, my tongue swollen,](the-night-we-met.html)
[Waiting for a reading to start](the-sea_the-beach.html)
[We found your shirt deep in the dark water,](theoceanoverflowswithcamels.html)
[I wish I'd kissed you when I had the chance.](time-looks-up-to-the-sky.html)
[There are more modern ideals of beauty](todaniel.html)
[Paul only did his reading on the toilet.](toilet.html)
[He couldn't find a shirt to go to work in.](toothpaste.html)
[TREATISE ON LITERATURE AS "SPOOKY](treatise.html)
[He dropped the penny in the dryer, turned it on, and turned around.](underwear.html)
[I can walk through the rain, that rare occurrence](walking-in-the-rain.html)
[He didn't go back into the shed for a long time.](wallpaper.html)
[I saw two Eskimo girls playing a game](weplayedthosegamestoo.html)
[There is a cave just outside of Flagstaff made from ancient lava flows.](what-we-are-made-of.html)
[Your casserole dish takes the longest:](when-im-sorry-i.html)
[_**HYMN 386: JOKES**_](window.html)
[The radio is screaming the man](worse-looking-over.html)
[He sat down at his writing desk and removed his new pen from its plastic wrapping.](writing.html)
[While chopping a tree in the woods with his hatchet (a Christmas gift from his mother) a bird he'd never heard before cried out.](x-ray.html)
[He would enter data at work for fifty minutes and then go on break.](yellow.html)