1663 5 5
|
“Dear, baby, what do you fear?”
Or maybe it was, “Now here are the keys to the lock.”
|
166321
|
It will only be minutes before I can slip out of this shelter, but time has suspended itself like a web over the sky. I look up and see a break in the clouds moving north from the furthest tip of Lake Erie. Rain turns to drizzle, other guests arrive toget
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1662103
|
“No one likes an indecisive sexual partner.”
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16622214
|
I thought each day died inside the clock.
|
166221
|
"How could anyone say that I was wrong, that I was crazy?" These thoughts scraped across her mind and tore open the reasons she had knitted herself into over the years.
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16621410
|
Sid, the owner of the red convertible, always slept with his twin Lhasa Apsos, Helpless and Hopeless. He was an early riser and took his “girls”, as he called them, out for a brief walk, yes, and also he was up early to take his morning penicillin because he…
|
166211
|
I. The girl within the sleeping woman dreams her dream of ending. To her comes the cowgirl with no kids: she's riding high atop her turquoise horse, steady by its braided mane. Silver pistols holstered. The girl in the woman in the dream she's dreaming…
|
166283
|
45s I’ve kept wrapped in newspaper in the attic. These are all mine. Some doubling up in sleeves. Some pushing tears in the seams.
|
166210
|
Artie invited me to go with him to pick out a Halloween Pumpkin for the house. I had recently moved into a communal living situation and we were still getting to know each other. Artie was the kind of person who made a special occasion out of ordinary life. Why…
|
166200
|
"Being honest with me," said her teacher, "will hopefully allow you to be honest with yourself--writing is about being honest, and articulating that honesty."
It sounded like a riddle, and her teacher looked at her with the sanctimony of a wizard.
|
166233
|
And him, now there’s a him. I’d like if he were perfect, but perfect things never are. My daughter says it best, when she contrasts the two of you, “Daddy worked to forget about his problems. When he works, it makes him feel like there is a problem.”
|
1661164
|
He ran his forefinger round the rim of the lid then sucked at his fingertip. The texture's like chalk, he thought, it tastes of earth. He hadn't anticipated this — but dipped his finger in again and swallowed. It was like scraping his tongue against a blackboard on…
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1661122
|
i miss you/
at times unbearably/
a dull ache that won’t quit
|
166183
|
I walked on hot coals. She got ahead of me. (228 words)
|
166122
|
When the sky was thinner and water faster, we would chase the falling stars.
|
166121
|
Oh no, here is that Whitman man
I’ve heard he is a bounder.
Don’t look his way or catch his eye-
Just get another round, dear.
|
166187
|
I usually idle by Spades Check Cashing on 8th Ave. and catch folks that way. The Homestead cops, they moved stations from a little up Amity to down on 7th, which is closer to Spades, but they leave me alone. I've drove jitneys almost ten years. Only been cited twice,…
|
16612119
|
I once read a book of warnings.
|
16611813
|
My uncle looks into the bleached eye of his cat and asks
"What happened to my ear?"
The meerkat’s eye replies:
"You had cancer. Remember?
They had to cut off your ear to save you."
|
1661119
|
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?
|
166076
|
Alexander Ivanovich stuck out his leg and tripped Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev. Daniil Ivanovich Yuvachev stood up, took two steps forward, stuck out his leg and tripped Alexander Ivanovich.
|
166064
|
|
166076
|
I'm a librarian. A reader. I identify as a four-eyed person. I've always worn glasses. I got my first pair in the second grade. It was a miracle! The blurry world I'd inhabited all my life suddenly came into focus. I could see the blackboard! I could read street signs! I…
|
166043
|
There is nothing so obscure it is not enhanced by talking, nothing so dull it cannot be coaxed into brilliance, nothing so deep it cannot be dug from an abyss and brought to the surface in paroxysms of red.
|
166075
|
I was Orson Welles skulking in the shadows and you Alida Valli;
our time measured like footsteps advancing on Gethsemane.
|
1660206
|
She lifts her head, nose heavenward. There’s a wet spot on my dress from our lovemaking, its aroma as heady as Claudine’s bouillabaisse. I hope she smells it.
|
166098
|
I spot another fat lady in another part of the store, and I slap her butt, too. She tells me I'm a bad boy.
|
16601412
|
Behind them all, in the background, a tray of vodka tonics waits on a glass table, the limes losing color as they drown.
|
1660106
|
He is drilling the door of a safe to access the keys he locked inside.
|
16602913
|
Cinnamon and smoke
infuse the days that shorten,
chill, accelerate.
|
