1999 5 1
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Class (appears in my book Breaking it Down; no journal publication) When your neighbor James Frehley cusses you out for hanging a block and tackle from the silver maple in your front lawn, begin to pull the engine from your Galaxie anyway, smile and nod…
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199965
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What doesn't kill you gives you great material.
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19993111
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They all looked for Vic's leg after the accident.
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199994
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History is replete with brutally imaginative techniques of torture and execution, but I am the only death machine that doubles as a musical instrument.
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199821
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I used to think the world was fucked and it was up to me and me alone to see it unfucked. That's really what I used to think, but I've been trying to work on that. It's not a particularly flattering characteristic I have. I'm trying to be more positive.
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199885
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As long as he could still take the stairs, he would go down there to be with the memories that each piece held. He knew that their time was about up, because his was too. His wife had already gone, and even before that she had long stopped using the washe
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1998117
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On the bank of the stream, we take off our clothes and dash into the water.
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199843
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I cannot read one more award winning novel by a female Asian author about the atrocities committed against their childhood, she thought. Then she sat down with her trusty yellow pad and Papermate fineline to write the next lyrical story of a female Asian writer and the…
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199842
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Two by two they come walking
down 7th Ave
girl with girl
boy and girl
boy and boy
two pigeons strolling
side by side
two robins
two crows walking stiffly
like two pieces of
anthracite coal
two spiders
two dogs sniffing each oth
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199876
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...some years later I heard that an old friend jumped off that bridge to her death.
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199720
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Every day she loves me a little less, and justifies it by saying that there is less of me to love.
At some crucial, overlooked space in our life together, I used up my compassion and started to spend hers.
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199700
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Dear Bess —
I go to the First Assembly of God's church. (a Praising Spirit-Filled Fellowship.) It is in Maui. Dr. James Morocco, Senior Pastor. He has been pastoring the church for over twenty years.
My, what a big change I am finding in my new l
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19971711
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When he woke he carried the body of a cat instead of a man. Next to him his cat dreamed it had a human body.
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199774
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There was a time when she could quell the loathing that Fred inspired in her. She could force it down. Back then, for instance, when they’d been in counseling, the ball of hatred had only been a little, overripe orange - squishy and occasionally mushed
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199612
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She can tell you seven things she doesn’t love about her face.
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199600
|
The year is 2110. The earth is no longer habitual for human beings. The oceans are gone, the sky is red and irradiated and the last vestiges of human civilian are located within the confines of massive barrier cities. For a century mankind has been at war
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1996127
|
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199663
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Your finger quivers as it writes
Upon me words in water,
Words I cannot read nor drink
But feel them as you drink
Them with your tongue
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199586
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Every lunch time the numerous small jukeboxes that are distributed about the dining area fill the air with webs of King Curtis and Benny Goodman.
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199520
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When Elvis died, I felt so empty that I headed straight for Jimmy Choo's, but quietly, with the half-veil of my pillbox hat draped low over my face. I didn't want to draw attention to my vintage Dior mourning outfit, since I normally wear pants, even here. The voices…
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199554
|
Are you asleep? He says.
Wake up.
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199500
|
Physical therapy was on the agenda every morning, first thing. A nurse would come to my room from the basement floor where they did physical therapy. She'd wrap me in a blanket and put me into a wheelchair, even though it was obvious I didn't need one to
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199511
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nothing has ever happened in this or that or any other or maybe too damn many parallel universes. . . .
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1995168
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The three of us traveled seven hours that day and Al traveled as far in the service of finding the right tool for his writing.
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199500
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Tombstones are only granite symbols of a man’s life, Gus thought as he changed lanes. Children, they were the ultimate epitaph.
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199554
|
In this coaly no-time/
strewn with fallen stars,/
you are a roaming panther/
and I am a tangle of snakes.
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1995118
|
often as i lie awake i wonder are you awake too?/
we never had any children, he said ruefully/
that summer i cried so much that robert called me soakie/
robert, dying: creating silence
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19941413
|
. . . clinging to life in a shroud of winter air. It veered up five flights to a sweltering summer night on the roof . . .
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19942413
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199433
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“I don’t want to scare you,” the stewardess says, “but there are ten police officers waiting for you outside the plane.”
I reach into the diaper bag and grab an Elmo raspberry/pear cereal bar, rip it open, take a bite, sip some apple juice fr
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