1998 9 7
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A man lives with a woman he loves enough to live with, but not enough to marry and not enough for kids. He knows he could love others enough to marry, enough for kids, but he's not the kind of man to find those women when he's with this woman.Sometimes “love”…
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199853
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The summer everyone read Faulkner, I read Hemingway. Out of spite.
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1998146
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The handsome man at the opposite table swivels his head at the tall cool slim blonde entering the breakfast cafe. The ordinary woman sitting with him adjusts her chair accordingly. She pretends to ignore her husband's distraction, smoothes her hair, licks her…
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199722
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She would have moved on to the next guy in the next bar, the one who looked like danger on a stick.
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199711
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In sleep their bodies drift between the sheets until they find each other.
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199700
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“Yeah, she's a real slut,” many contestants' mothers say.
“If he could only keep it in his pants, he'd probably be able to stay in the country,” others say about their sons
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19972018
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or the voice that wants/
to be inscribed/
forgets the sounds
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199798
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They sat on the couch, and he tried to unbutton her buttons, but she fended him off.
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199700
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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…
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19971710
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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.
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199766
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She sang will you still need me
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199700
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2 sticks soft (like your heart) butter...
... 1 cup crushed (like you) walnuts...
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199764
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Where truth is revealed
To all, transparency
In policy, including
The REAL reasons
We are at war.
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199665
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At age eleven, I murder the coffee table. I gouge with every available implement: thumbtacks, Lefty scissors, the plastic hand of my Barbie accomplice (who really should have known better). It is a slow death. In the end, there is nowhere to hide the body. When I am…
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199642
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Martin named it “Squishy” for two reasons. The first reason was because it was the noise it made when it came out of the hole in his basement. The second is because it’s what it did to Grandfather...
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1996139
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Dear Fictionaut Family,Some of you may recognize my name and remember reading my work, some of you may have joined more recently and be wondering what the hell I'm doing addressing you directly. I began writing on Fictionaut in 2010, during four years as I was fragmenting…
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19962117
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For my Dad
Happy Father's Day!
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199697
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1The Bird King has fallen in lovewith a radiator.He adoresher pockmarked skin,her neurotic arias,her coldness,her impulsive warmth. 2Tiring of his dalliance with the radiator,the Bird King woos an armchair.She's amply upholsteredand groans dreamilywhen he sits on…
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199600
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The old mage said nothing. She did not even return the complement. All she had was disgust in her eyes as she looked at the grown men and women. To her they had no hearts.
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199662
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1. Think up problems that don’t exist
2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist
3. Elation
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19951312
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He introduced me to key lime pie, and for this alone I would have loved him forever. It was an innocent time for me, and I was easy to please.
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199591
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Stupid's rising up, I see. Melting all the intellect. I before E, except after C, but that's not how the alphabet goes.
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19951614
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In the St. Mark's Bar and Grill romance is a speedy thing, a blurred whir of grope, kiss, connect. The tricky thing is timing: to leave in time for the boozy love of the hour to carry through to full, naked contact. Some succeed of course. Others overstay, hang past the…
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199510
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Inside my high-rise studio apartment there are only three locations where Crane Man can't see me. The bathroom is one—although he watches me go in and he watches me come out. Crane Man does a lot of watching. Sometimes it seems he spends more time looking…
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19951918
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We were in the car more than anywhere else. A few days driving, then a few days to get back home.
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1995104
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Who puts Vaseline
on the forefinger
of Lenin?
I want to know
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19952118
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When I died, she said, she was going to have me cremated and put my ashes in the cats’ litter box.
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1995115
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i.More and more, for Megan LeMaster, each beginning was its own end. She couldn't bear to buy flowers or dresses that seemed too beautiful. Friendships formed, endured, gave out in a handshake. Each deed in life had an immediate, inescapable…
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1995227
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Men have a way of doing that, Lord, why? I always thought retirement means you get to sleep longer. Nope He must arise early, make breakfast, after 40 years of eating mine. Next, he insists on coming with me to the market. When I try to…
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199563
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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…
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