2032 1 1
|
I bet if I went back, Old Stradlater would still be combing his gorgeous locks in front of the same goddam mirror.
|
2032 4 3
|
On Day 1122 at 4:14 AM the door which has remained since installation firmly glued to the masonry behind opens and a man emerges blinking shielding his eyes against fine stinging snow.
|
2032 0 0
|
At the time I first went to work for Mr. Byron my family was in a sorrowful state. My dad, much as I can recall, was one of those roving kinds, called himself a carpenter or contractor, depending on the kind of job he was aspiring to, and was subject to f
|
2032 9 3
|
She wrapped her legs around him. His hand barely held the rope and later he could not have said if it happened above or below the water’s surface.
|
2032 1 1
|
"Ah, finally the rain stopped pouring!" She opens the window to let the sticky air out of the house. The colours outside have changed. The air is clear and the sky turns into light pink while the sun is drowning at the horizon. She takes a deep breath. The…
|
2032 6 3
|
I am at a wedding with a new girlfriend. The bride is her old college roommate. I don't really know anyone else here. The wedding is being held at a huge estate, located on the edge of enormous cliffs that overlook the ocean. Despite the danger of this precarious…
|
2031 4 1
|
Refuse to go to the church service, even though you already missed the funeral. Tell his mother something came up. Call his phone over and over, just to hear his voice, until his mother asks you to stop. Make a recording of his voicemail. Delete it an
|
2031 0 0
|
An armpit fart is a simulated sound of flatulence produced by creating a pocket of air between the armpit of a partially raised arm and the hand, then swiftly closing this pocket by bringing the arm close to the torso.
|
2031 0 0
|
No news spreads faster than news of a death. Word of the death of a child can be heard simultaneously in a thousand places. . . the word spread by telephone, in back yards from clothesline to clothesline, with whispers in grocery stores, in the looks on faces stunned into…
|
2031 4 3
|
She brought the ends of her fingers to her mouth and moistened them in her warm saliva. The whorls of her prints glistened in the harsh light of the room, but it wasn't her own outlines she was interested in raising. His hand lay outstretched in his…
|
2030 11 7
|
I walk back home, alone and without the bus fare. Distancing myself from the shadows that float interminably against the drowsy sun. Where frightened boys often roam, going in circles against the long lines of epitaphs and gravestones. Puzzling…
|
2030 10 5
|
1.There's a young woman in a nightclub seated next to a window out of which she watches the slow descent of snow, illuminated by strategic lights. She imagines herself falling with those flakes. Her friend has left her for the dance floor. The young woman is…
|
2030 17 10
|
Even if your heart is as large as a small car, your tongue as heavy as two grown men—even then—you will have to carry it with you wherever you go.
|
2030 23 22
|
The painting was on loan from a gallery in Chicago. We stood there connecting the dots.
|
2029 3 2
|
The Bird King suffers from phantom head syndrome. Ever since his decapitation by a critic, he has felt pain where his head used to be. Sometimes it wakes him in the night. It's so excruciating, he fumbles for a saw. But alas! there's nothing to chop off.He's seen every…
|
2029 13 9
|
Things don’t happen here, life is so boring in this little Irish town.
|
2029 6 6
|
ghosts are local plagues/of unexpended grief—tears/can't be bodiless.
|
2029 0 0
|
It’s confusing enough to grow up in a place like America, a country without definitive culture, except for ranch dressing and reality TV, but it’s even worse to grow up half one thing, half another, christened a hyphenation of names without connection to
|
2029 21 5
|
You got a lot of people, out there
|
2028 3 1
|
Dizzy but still alive
Inside this conversation
I ask if you have a sister
And if she'll know me
If I'm with you.
|
2028 6 5
|
I peeled off a hundred. For the screwdriver, I said. The kid shook his head, made a pushing-away gesture. You need it worse’n I do right now, he said.
|
2028 5 3
|
The summer everyone read Faulkner, I read Hemingway. Out of spite.
|
2028 19 11
|
|
2028 2 0
|
What the heck to believe in??
|
2028 3 2
|
You call the shit in this paper news? ‘Dog Accidentally Shoots Man With His Own Gun, Swedish Man Bursts Into Flames on Train Platform, The Truth About Elvis's Hidden Extraterrestrial Daughter.' Seriously? Enough about Elvis already.
|
2028 3 3
|
First, the title: How George Bush And the Lovely Danielle Saved Planet Earth From Zork the Galactic Destroyer. A little unwieldy perhaps but still, a grabber. Already you're thinking, George Bush? Saving Earth? Did he die by his own fucking hand?…
|
2028 5 1
|
The light against the nylon walls of the tent gets me feeling a little down. The air's wet inside, but it's warm. The whole world outside is creaking and chirping, everything that wakes up with the dawn's first tepid blue light does so and starts making n
|
2028 16 13
|
If this was the day when the bribes of whiskey and US dollars would fail to work. If on this day a black bag, smelling of shit and fear, would be pulled over his head – the bloodied roots of a knocked out tooth tickling his neck.
|
2027 22 17
|
The bungalow was unlocked. The screen
door was unhooked. The trout on the
counter was deboned.
|
2027 0 0
|
Caroline smiles before reaching out to touch a shapeless shadow dancing on the wall, closing her eyes as the bumps in the primer serve brail to oncoming dreams.
|