2407 16 15
|
A wrinkled old woman sat at the table next to me. “Are you a writer?” she asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Are you Jewish?”
“No, I’m not,” I replied.
“Where do you come from?” she asked in her broken English.
“Chicago,” I said. “The Bohemian ghetto there, o
|
104011
|
You think there’s a chance the bag could be holding a severed head, or live or dead kittens.
|
79154
|
with a finger I will let you know. If you mean even just one given look at the moon I will know. If you peel off one lonely star and put that shining shell in your watch pocket for later or to skip across your sad pillow…
|
98955
|
|
123640
|
So ya think you’re a writer? First of all, shut up. No, seriously, the very first thing you need to do, this very instant, is to just shut your mouth and take a seat.
|
93465
|
The one at
dusk is not the one you met this morning.
That one's gone like a head in the window.
|
141521
|
After he’d told her on Friday that No, he wasn’t going to sign that contract for the cemetery plots she’d picked out—“I don’t want to spend my whole life knowing exactly where I’ll end up” is exactly what he’d said—the marriage, as far as she was concerne
|
89201
|
On the street / The protesters stand / Yelling words empty as wind
|
103786
|
remembering Cahokia, a place we rent near the water's edge, for we dare not enter
|
1603149
|
... a moth,
a kiss. A silence.
|
106342
|
If this road could answer
I would ask her what it is like
to follow the path
of the rippleshimmery river
for too many miles
through the slowly ghosting towns
and the corncovered landscapes
of the dying Midwest
|
72110
|
Jerry peered out into the dark landscape with no fear left.
|
105584
|
(the vast preponderance of dark matter and dark energy discernible in these latter days begins to suggest just how dark the humor of existence is) . . .
|
1951713
|
So then we had to worry about the Russian soldiers. When they heard we were Jewish, they said “How come the Germans didn’t kill all of you?”
|
52055
|
"Where've you been?" the image in the mirror asked. "I haven't seen you since yesterday," she said.
"Yeah, I miss you too," he said.
|
106243
|
Let me swim into your eyes. Let me show you my world. My album. My Albania. My albumen.
|
67551
|
I sit in a small office amongst a huge pile of letters picking out individuals and arranging them on a big square made of something like paraffin
|
97686
|
What the spaces say//
can be heard in the short/
and longer silences
|
1387129
|
in which creative destruction holds the heads of entire populations beneath the surface of the water in bathtubs until the bubbles stop
|
157877
|
The watermelon slices were painted wood, because they held their shape better in the heat. The photo was done night-for-day with bright spotlights to make for sharper outlines than natural light could provide. In actuality, it is all shadows.
|
63210
|
I remember him saying something like: “Are you aware of how completely horrible you are as a human being?”
|
978115
|
The spectacle of weather/
on the prairies approaches.
|
104031
|
He sees how he could release the duck, imagines it winging low over the water to where the others have made it safely.
|
99875
|
He knows why I’m here, so he stalls, talking about the coffee, about how it’s a new dark blend from a little shop in The Village, about how he loves the flavor, so rich, but just because a coffee is dark doesn’t mean it’s stronger, that, in fact, it’s the
|
109875
|
...the daffodils will fling/
their yellow petals, taunting winter
|
12875
|
I listen to my psychotherapy patients complain about their lives all day. Bitterly, hopelessly. I listen for little openings that offer possibilities for changing perspective and feeling weller. But my five minutes between each session, whether it includes a bathroom or…
|
111761
|
She burps in beauty, like a frog
Who sits on lily pad so green,
Resounding nightly in his bog
But to my eyes unseen.
|
23142
|
The silent that are silent, they know no defiance. They are the true inexplicable, the true unheard. Science is Religion, Religion is not Science. The image of the word, it is not itself the word, it is just as it is, an image, some thing for the eyes,…
|
118095
|
A spire
that had stood one hundred and forty years
fell in
a single second of the blackest day.
|
116596
|
I tell myself I should have known. You were always absence.
|
