2425 5 4
|
When she was eleven, Margaret still believed in mermaids. She would fasten the neon diving rings that her mother gave her to her ankles and swim around in the pool for hours. By the end of the afternoon, with chlorine-swollen skin she would wince as she…
|
137954
|
Suddenly, the room was filled with a screaming vortex directed at a pinpoint in the corner. Timmy's bureau was gone and everything loose in the room was flying towards the spot it had occupied. Timmy stood up in horror. He tried to seal this rent by tossi
|
108953
|
—but neither Lenin’s serenity nor Voron’s could last for long!
|
141553
|
Her name was Christine
and she was nailed to the cross
of their lust
and their greed,
and their vengeance
|
251855
|
I used to charm you,
hold you in my hand.
|
177755
|
The white faces of the train look up in an attempt to satisfy presumption, smoothing out any interest into glassy eyed gestures toward looking but lacking the very important quality of sight.
|
163051
|
Nicole knows that Deirdre is winding up for the weekly pitch, practicing the line in her mind.
|
171451
|
I can't find my way back to the library. I've heard of this happening, that if you leave even for just one day and for a very good reason, as good a reason as mine, you may not find your way back. Now why should this be so? I do not understand this library. It houses…
|
142650
|
I noticed his pistol before his pissbag and I knew then that failure not only had a face but a balding head, too
|
211851
|
unbury yourself from the silt and give me some seal love.
|
213452
|
The storm grew in might until it spawned the worst kind of tornado, an F-5 or Finger of God.
|
169452
|
This is Peter’s office. The room is small, and the wood paneling is painted white. Light colors, Peter has been told, make a room appear larger.
|
131153
|
Some guys get by on hope or hate or both. Some lose their minds, if they brought them in the first place.
|
147654
|
But there it was, amid the “junk” set to be thrown out with the rest of his childhood, opened accidentally to the page of his Indiana Jones Action Journal about his winter formal when he was sixteen.
|
129955
|
was only a small enough matter of time before you started to show up as new words like soft pink clues dropped inside tiny fingernail teacups to find their innermost meaning, then wishes, floating up near the top like…
|
332655
|
I got this job where I sell snow cones from a cart in a petting zoo. Parents ask if their children can take pictures with me. I neigh and nod my big horse head. After my shifts, I go into the bar, still in my getup, as this horse, and the bartender says,
|
169353
|
For reasons he couldn't fathom, his motorcycle only moved in reverse. He engaged the engine and lurched backward hard. He called a friend, a gear-head with perpetually dirty nails, asked him to look it over.
|
267151
|
He didn't think there would be girlish confidences, hopes, dreams but he is shocked, appalled, by the little boys aging at ten-speed, already wizened old men ready for cancer and heart attacks with toy trucks in their hands, skeletal women beloved by men
|
165953
|
“You’ve put all my anorexic friends on the table nearest the buffet,” I say. “And all my bulimic friends on the other side of the room away from the buffet and the toilets.”
|
125556
|
1. During the outpouring of our newly discovered grief oh how we danced, electrical, into oblivion, maybe once, twice. It was toall to be expected, but not everything you feel is always real. After all the dust may settle, but it…
|
145455
|
I should probably make it clear up front that I am not in my right mind, which I quite understand compromises the credibility of what I'm about to say. Without going into the history of my minor and somewhat more major psychotic episodes, my psychiatrist, unsure how finally…
|
181852
|
I imagined the sun to be the moon and discovered it was not on a road trip in California where I noticed the sun on one side and the moon on the other.
|
164454
|
...That flash of horror as well as the lie that replaced it were mirrors of sorts and both told the truth.
|
200355
|
“You’re not in Saigon anymore, Mai Bi'ch,” I said, craning to read her name badge. “They’ll need to be much better than that if you want to stay in this country.”
|
238653
|
For the woman with no arms, life is a constant dexterity demonstration
|
150452
|
At 11 pm, it is 87 degrees and I sit in front of the air conditioner, eating oatmeal. The oats aren't soft enough, but it is sugary and fills me. Outside, the city hovers at the edge of a brown out, people sweating hopelessly inside small boxes. In Utah, it was cold…
|
147555
|
Another year has flown, crashed to the ground, and convulsed to its death in a final match with the meaninglessness of existence. Decided to try my luck as a Walmart greeter this year but the apomorphine treatment made me break out in hives and I reacted…
|
164952
|
Do you remember who I am yet?
I remember the first time you made love to me. It appears I was one of the lucky ones … it wasn’t in a car, it wasn’t in your Dad’s boat, underwater, or any other weird place you've written about. It was actual
|
242852
|
"People do that. They cross the road when they aren’t supposed to and get away with it. They do it all the time. Only, then, he might think I was a rebel and I’d rather he imagine me a square. A square who never was a wild thing. A rebel who chose to be t
|
123555
|
Written in big letters
Across the back window
Of an old Pontiac:
|
