109043
|
I'd never seen a dead person before, let alone one that was living just
seconds earlier.
|
1545206
|
The book has known many women’s hands, something erotic and frequently checked out from our local library. Its cover depicts a man and a woman, both with improbable if not impossible bodies. I believe the term is bodice-ripper.
|
136943
|
I. When my lips mouth yours where they are…
|
88211
|
I am tripping on poetry.
Purple ink drips from my eyes like ergot of rye.
|
116576
|
Perhaps nothing has never existed;/
perhaps something always has
|
68366
|
This is not her death. This is absent-minded omniscience. This is impossible. And then again, the inside-out, implosion. And the hall was clogged with bodies; none of them hers, but who could be sure?
|
88343
|
I used to fear things. The lonesome wind come through the clapboards. Dry hillsides rustling. My own skin in the summer heat. Rattlers. Lurking. Abandoned coal pits. Pa said I was afraid of desolation. I didn't know what he meant by that. How can you be…
|
143993
|
His worst nightmare had come true. He wasn't wearing green and all of the other kids were.
|
1232103
|
When she was nineteen, she began to brew a baby in her belly. She named it, and sang to it, and organized the leftover hand-me-downs that hadn't been worn ragged through by the first seven sets of recipients.
|
90655
|
In an authentic Irish pub in Las Vegas where over much crowd noise the three of us are discussing Yeats, Joyce and Lady Gregory. We’re in an Irish pub after all, plus the fact we’re literature profs attending a Vegas academic conference.
|
93711
|
“I love women. They’re like goddesses.”
|
101954
|
I find myself in an unfamiliar restaurant, its cuisine an uncomfortable pastiche of Croatian, Burmese, Jamaican and leftovers of long ago Sunday dinners in a small New England town.
|
91520
|
Emma held her arm up to John’s eyes. He looked, nodded. “My burns are on the inside,” he told her. “I’ll never show you.”
|
94100
|
“A lot of kids–granted, kids who aren’t too bright–will choose a school because of its mascot, and that’s what Chipper is all about,” he says.
|
78611
|
Behind me are two doors. Each opens onto a room which is more event than space.
|
71100
|
I can't show you the territory- not quite yet, not how I see it. But I do have a map, a glorious and vain construction. It gives you a glimpse, a sight. I wish you could see it all.
|
9981910
|
I can admire Falling Water
and find Mr. Wright a complete shit.
|
63622
|
familiar people passing closely
faces we recognize but cannot place
|
80900
|
This is between the two wars, so
it surprises you
when TV screens light up with this in the hotel breakfast room.
You are in Delhi, you were supposed to fly home
last night but
fog canceled everything.
|
99632
|
|
111452
|
When a multinational big box furniture store opened just off the expressway outside the city selling all the same products at greatly reduced prices, they contemplated the possibility of closing their store.
|
14572116
|
I always wanted to head on up to New York City and be taught by a decent painter, but as time kept on trucking, it became clear that that was just a big dream that would not shake out and I'd never be a real artist because I was shy of the money I'd need to stay up there in…
|
106922
|
I do not know the species of birds here. /
The two I see playing on the balcony at night /
I can never call back.
|
87322
|
The boy in the elevator with round glasses, /
who carried a newly-purchased broom, /
was tall and burdened with clothes
|
10361110
|
Almost every weekend I'd ask Henry to go out with me and Marge, telling him we could double and, hey, maybe he could bring Ellen, who he dated a while back, who still asked about him. I'd suggest such things as going to a movie or out for a few drinks to reminisce about our…
|
143262
|
A piece of her skull landed here. But it fell off. Then I couldn't find it.
|
106721
|
|
109851
|
"I wonder what happened to Murder Man and Lust Girl?" wondered The Black Toadstool. The Anti-Justice League were in Machu Picchu, on a short vacation after taking over most of South America and the South Pole. The South Pole had been so easy. …
|
13471112
|
...even unbelieving prayer
muttered with quiet resigned breaths
can not foretell or forestall stains...
|
95901
|
One by one, cars filed into the cemetery, pelted by the summer rain under a gun-metal sky. The procession moved slowly, a series of brake lights and headlights, too close together, too far apart; there were sedans and SUVs, mini-vans and pick-up trucks, shiny new vehicles…
|