2045 12 9
|
in which creative destruction holds the heads of entire populations beneath the surface of the water in bathtubs until the bubbles stop
|
20451311
|
I am constricted by rings. The weight of self crushes me.
|
2045134
|
. . . she didn’t bow her head.
|
204500
|
“Where are you going?” asked the young man. Teary-eyed and beaten, he gently put his hands on the shoulders of Snow-child, her back turned from him. “Home,” Snow-child said. “I'm going back to Norway.” …
|
20451510
|
There was gonna be a rumble in our schoolyard. An outright brawl. It was gonna be just like Blackboard Jungle. Only real. Not some movie at the Duwamish Drive-In. Every boy in my school, it seemed like, was lined up outside except me. All the third and fourth graders…
|
204555
|
Crawl to the dark places I love most, loud music and off key laughter, glimmering green and brown bottles eagerly holding the dim lights overhead inside themselves like ransomed stars.
|
204500
|
I laid in the road, broken and alone, until I had no choice but to pull myself together and get out.
|
204554
|
Max is the color of burnt caramelized sugar
the sweet crust that decorates our bright enameled pots.
|
204522
|
He pulls on his wispy goatee and shifts his weight a few times from one foot to the other. That doesn’t help. It rarely does, to be honest.
|
2044155
|
Megalomania is a kind of backwards leprosy. It rots your insides out while your skin glistens and grows tighter around your bones.
|
2044115
|
She wears a green and pink bikini and walks real slow, poking her chest out so people will notice her.
|
2044107
|
god bless my shapeless head. we are good at becoming older. i feel incredibly negative all the time.
|
204498
|
They sat on the couch, and he tried to unbutton her buttons, but she fended him off.
|
204487
|
I'd been working for two years as a barista in a Starbuck's in a giant, two-story Borders in an upscale mall on Rt. 355, a main artery between Washington D.C., and Frederick, Maryland. I'd finished my M.F.A in 2000 and was trying to build up steam for more grad…
|
204400
|
The ice in Mum’s drink clinked as she rolled the glass across her forehead. “Ith that a gay thing or ith that a vampire thing? ’Coth I’m finding thith all a bit confuthing.”
|
20443018
|
I dreamed that coffee grounds had spilled on my Buffet. There was another clarinet, a silver one, that belonged to a man not in the room, that was clean of debris.
|
204412
|
The zombie apocalypse was long foretold as a rather exciting bit of bother involving shotguns and chainsaws, but the reality of it is rather depressingly boring.
|
20442214
|
The night we crossed the Madres my father stuffed his Stetson full of cash.
|
20441911
|
It's been sixteen days since I spoke with another soul. I don't mind much, but I know enough about people to know most would think I'm mighty odd. Muriel, for example. She'd be pissed as all get out. …
|
2044114
|
Upon learning the fetus has fingernails, Missy texts her boyfriend: It has nails! He won’t reply because he’s just left for war, but she does it just the same.
|
204377
|
The mountains of humility went silent, / the rain of regency dried its eyes
|
204384
|
“I don’t know what’s going on there,” Hank, who hated his name and wanted a more Biblical name because those names (Jeremiah! Matthew! David!)—although common—sound ominous, said as he pointed up to the top of the apartment building that housed the whores
|
204394
|
Three hours isn't that long.
|
204332
|
... her hair spills like spinach all the way down to her backpack, the top pocket where the bowl and the cinnamon estrange themselves from the coffee.
|
20432916
|
"...they ran shirtless like pagans under southern stars."
|
204341
|
What I need to secure from you now are two swears on this copy of Camp Bylaws for the Hearty and True that you won’t let my misinformed intrusion dampen your beginnings.
|
204311
|
When I was six, my father brought home a fishbowl. Look out for the inhabitants, he said. You can play Neptune in their microcosm of the sea.
|
204384
|
He beats the girl, stabs her 22 times, rapes her, then uses his fingertips to push her orbital sockets into the back of her head before killing her. At trial, he laughs about whether or not there…
|
20431412
|
The hour reflected those pleasant moments when evening hunger can be satiated by anticipation alone, before the pangs become demanding.
|
20432212
|
The drinking will continue/
until morale improves
|
