1947 11 9
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What if I never feel like a real artist? What does it even mean to be a "real" artist? What if nobody ever cares about what I make?
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194663
|
Oh, also, had no idea what the whole visit to the Kingdom of the Dead was getting at. Interesting, but seems unrelated to the larger story. I'd cut it. Remember — this is a story about one man's attempt to get home. Stay focused on that.
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194686
|
you hear the knell of kindness
long before its cathedral voices -- a recessional --
barters better times.
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194610
|
He searched for something deserving of the word “bestowed,” something so rare as to horrify the clerics of ordinariness.
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19461210
|
Poor kid. She didn't mean to leave my business card on her kitchen counter next to the telephone. It was a mistake.
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194664
|
Some people might find it strange and a bit obsessive to mow their lawn every day, but to Shiram it was an irreplaceable part of his daily existence.
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194642
|
She catches my head in a leg scissors and says for me to say Ninja Uncle. Instead, I bite into her flesh that only remotely tastes like a soft salt pretzel.
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19461510
|
On the birthday before he started school, he received a pencil case from his paternal grandparents. The violet, oblong pouch contained a pencil and a pencil sharpener in the same color. He didn't remember what had happened with the pencil or the sharpener, but he had…
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19461412
|
Behind them all, in the background, a tray of vodka tonics waits on a glass table, the limes losing color as they drown.
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1946124
|
It rises rigid and plumb from its heavy base, the severity of line yielding to grace only at the throat where it crests into a subtly constrictive pinch.
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194620
|
The morning sun rose up over the flat prairie, and the powdery snow crunched as you walked on it, and the air was so crisp it hurt as you took a breath. That is good, I thought. That is how you knew you were alive, and I was truly very alive, and there was not much to do so…
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1945127
|
Emma and I were in a shabby part of town with vacant lots and overgrown yards, and I wondered if something would happen as we loped beside Tom, who was slow-witted and 21. We were 13 . . .
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194500
|
"... Sometimes I think I'm so close to knowing what it's all about, to knowing myself, and then sometimes everything seems so hopeless, as if I haven't learned a thing."
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194500
|
The girl who was me stands in a sandbox with upraised arms, honey hair tied with olive yarn in two ponytails. She says nothing, but wants me to pick her up.
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1945115
|
A compliment is candy to the heartbroken, oxygen to a suffocating flame. The best hunter picks his prey carefully, selecting his line like an archer pulling an arrow from a quiver, quickly and efficiently, then flick! the line cuts through the air and…
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19451819
|
Where we live, at the edge of the foothills at the east edge of town, fire is always a worry during the summer, and this has been an exceptionally dry year.
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194511
|
The tiles begin inching toward him as soon as he moves. You've seen filings on glass. He's the magnet on the underside.
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194500
|
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194573
|
We spend life, or much of it rather, chasing epiphanies promised to us by hip prophets and free spirits.
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194565
|
I know she's a dog person, as she owns one.
“No, my asshole ex-boyfriend wanted one and then he left me with it.” she admits, then adds,
“I don't even like dogs. All dogs are needy.”
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194541
|
fated and cruel, a person I don't love
|
194532
|
Harold Smithe awoke that Tuesday morning precisely at 6 am. He did this every day for as long as he could remember. Even on the weekends when his schedule varied. Well, varied slightly. He lay in bed trying to wake up and mulled over the things he needed to accomplish for…
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194545
|
When the city froze and the darkness began to arrive ahead of rush hour, my pills worked; Butterfly Hu’s did not. In a double blind trial, you can’t know who gets the miracle, and who gets the sugar.
|
194510
|
"People just weren't getting it," he continued, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and hiccuping mildly. "It looks like it's time to UP the ANTE!"
|
194497
|
Dark, green grass covered the pasture like millions of tiny fingers swaying in the heat.
|
1944105
|
It’s a song you knew once, begin to remember now: You’ve had this dream before.
|
194410
|
As Gino exited the supermarket, plastics bags in tow, he began doing curls with his right arm. He’d been doing this for years, reasoning that he might as well get some exercise during the walk home.
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194410
|
and we got the apartment, which was on a street that backed up on an alley situated, as it turned out, right across the alley from the very first Hari Krishna house, where they would wake up at four every morning and begin their maddening chanting: Hari K
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194421
|
Two months after Peter moved out, it opened on the eastern-leaning boulevard, a stone's throw from the water. Caitlin heard about it from a friend at a bar three weeks after that, found that the concept wouldn't quietly settle in her mind, and made plans
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1944173
|
My swinging purse sent saucers tinkling to the tile and the copper-headed waitress flew over, swooping on the shatter, clutching clean forks like a handful of flowers.
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