113 2 1
|
|
108 15 14
|
|
102 14 12
|
"Your father is in the emergency room. You should come."
|
98 8 4
|
He tips the last pill into his mouth. Tower bells begin to chime. Swallows unlatch from a trellis and flutter into the square, peck at crumbs around the fountain. A woman reaches into her carpet bag and pulls out a handful of teeth, tosses them to the birds. They crunch…
|
97 11 9
|
...it was always the same—guilt, doubt, and bug splatter.
|
85 2 2
|
Most of Carl’s neighbors considered him a lone taciturn man at best and an eccentric loony at worst. His neighbors knew him as the guy who left his house every morning at eight dressed in a suit and tie.
|
85 6 7
|
Lights of human occupation burn/
in patterns like the growth/
of a bacillus, lethal and prodigious,
|
84 10 7
|
He disliked intrusion and very specifically innocuous intrusion, nice guys, one might say, those who tried to be near him to learn something from him or who admired him but who, as in that passage, came merely to disturb his work.
|
81 9 8
|
He died a printer finding late/
after so much selling himself selling/
a craft that pleased and paid enough
|
80 13 5
|
That led to the first aid box on the bed at 3 in the morning, but what about those veggies?
|
79 5 5
|
I stood at attention, wearing my brown shirt, crisp and military-creased.
|
78 5 2
|
"Sometimes you have to take mommies out to fancy restaurants so they know you love them enough to blow a lot of money on an overpriced meal and obsequious service," I told him.
|
77 0 0
|
Gerald's law practice wasn't new. He'd worked on the law review and finished near the top of his class thirty years ago. After earning his J.D., he'd gotten a master of law in taxation. His favorite cases required researching legal precedents, and he…
|
77 2 3
|
|
77 10 6
|
|
76 8 4
|
I had to kill someone today. Do not be alarmed, she was only real to me.
|
75 4 3
|
When you say they were too big, too wild, they weren't too big to be giants. Giants are meant to dwarf things. They can't help it. They're not trying to make you feel helpless to give them a haircut. They just grow fast. But they…
|
75 8 5
|
I cannot begin to list all the ways this conversation can go downhill from here, so I hang up the phone quietly.
|
75 6 4
|
Traveling with a live chicken on a city bus is an experience I hope never to repeat.
|
74 9 9
|
I told her I didn't love her. She said love wasn't important; she wanted to marry a man she could respect.
|
73 2 2
|
Man, technology fuckin’ sucks! I been ridin’ dis train for almost fif’een years now.
|
71 2 1
|
“Are you comparing the communists with Hitler?”
“Are you telling me there is no comparison?"
|
69 1 1
|
never have i wanted/ to stay in one place long,/ flight inspired to escape/ existential ennui--
|
69 13 9
|
in my dream I was grasping / the cellophane silk / of their wings
|
68 1 0
|
There's a commercial I have seen a few times for a television show on HBO about people who collect things. Their collections, as evident from the ads, are serious. These people have somehow managed to hold onto a lot of stuff. ‘There are a lot of really…
|
67 2 2
|
I have reasons to believe she’s been stealing.“
“Stealing what?”
“Steaks.”
“Steaks?”
|
65 2 1
|
|
65 1 1
|
George didn’t move when Cindy punched him in the nose. He just stood
up and walked to the fridge, poured a glass of water and dropped a few
ice cubes into the glass. The ice cracked in the glass as he walked
back to the couch.
|
65 5 4
|
who wears his knife on his tongue.
|
64 3 1
|
She felt like she was turning into someone else, someone who appeared normal. She would be inundated with everyone else's ideas, morphing into an insipid lemming, smiling and bantering about mindless things. She wouldn't even care she had changed...
|