1850 16 12
|
So I went to see the wrinkled
and rumpled poet, who insisted
on reading from memory, stumbling
through his sheaf of poems.
|
185010
|
"I read a cute animal story yesterday," I tell them. "And I was filled with rage. I can't live like this. There must be no more bears, or hamster-bears, or manatees, being hopeless and depressed. There must be no more cute animal stories—ever."
|
185011
|
Before the bills, before the fighting, before the need to blame something, there was a moment blown empty in the span of one doctor’s breath, a moment where bar nights and weekend benders had no meaning, a moment where the future was as blank as the bac
|
18501914
|
We all//
fall short and fail.
|
185054
|
A man with bleeding hands at the back door of Out of the Closet
this morning asked me for the bride and groom figurines at the
top of my donation box
|
1850116
|
She thinks she trusts this man; she wants to trust him. His face reminds her of a man who once took care of her on an airplane when she was a kid traveling by herself.
|
1850145
|
When I come to suck fresh raspberries'
juice from your hair
pressing the clasp of my mouth's purse
on the oyster of your ear;
|
1850104
|
He got up to the pulpit and said that he thought he might have made a mistake. I will never forget the desperate look on his face. He recalled being at his Ivy League school and wondering just what he was interested in upon his graduation and what would b
|
1849146
|
I was a six year old with no bike. Only the males in my familyhad that privilege. So one morning I got up very early, before the older siblings awoke, crept out the back porch door where Iknew there would be two bikes in the yard just waiting for me and my…
|
184976
|
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…
|
1849133
|
The spoken world is bigger than I had ever imagined it to be, wonderful and relentless and unforgiving, and to be a part of it was my grandest childhood fantasy. I don’t know what the world sees me as now, but inside I will always be a stutterer.
|
184994
|
“Why do I have to sign these cards? You haven't written your dreaded holiday letter yet.” “I told you not to complain or you'd be the one writing it. And addressing the envelopes. Then you can stamp them and take them to the Post Office!” …
|
184923
|
|
184962
|
So, when Daddy grabbed that cock by the neck and threw him into the hole that he quick covered with dirt, I knew right then that men would play a subservient role in my life going forward.
|
184921
|
Papa said he'd be in the stands watching: section H, 5th row, seat 35. During warmups, she had looked, during stretches, she had looked, but she had stopped looking right before the race."Don't worry about me," he had said. "Focus on the race," so when the man had said on…
|
1849149
|
I never thought I’d miss the sound of church bells, reminding me of my sudden apostasy,
faintly ringing over the rumpus where even the birds can’t get a word in edgeways.
|
184900
|
He went to the switchboard and rang one of the rooms. I moved away to a discreet distance so he could make his pitch in private, and soon he came back to the desk front. "He d-didn't like it much, b-but he said to s-send you up. Room 412."
|
184900
|
Once upon a time, not so long ago in Los Angeles, Jack and Jill Woodman’s father remarried.
|
184810
|
This is about a mescaline trip that went wrong. It happened back in the '60s and I know, the '60s have been done quite to death and nobody ever gets the trip right but--you'll like this one. Joey and…
|
18482410
|
Clayton had a grin like the hand of a beast that stretched as long as her gravel road...
|
184895
|
Sundays after Mass, Sister Edburga gathered the team in the shower room, we stripped naked in a circle, held hands and said a prayer we’d win our game. A boy no one knew walked alongside her with a box full of jockstraps.
|
184820
|
Fergus Winston, a former accountant from New York, finds himself mixed up in the middle of a trafficking operation in small town Iowa.
|
184898
|
If you get crushed in New York City
that's your own problem.
|
184886
|
“No,” he says. A simple lie. “I -” He pushes the sleeping bag off of his legs. Their getaway reset was a mistake.
|
184822
|
Jacob could tell it was a man he had just walked past, a broken man with an olive green Vietnam era military jacket, a man who had probably served his country as honorably as anyone chosen at lottery and forced to kill for a subsistence wage…
|
1848147
|
a bird who gives messages
|
184883
|
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.
|
18481612
|
The P-36 used for gunnery exercises was twitchy and stubborn...
|
184794
|
|
1847104
|
Across from the Hell Hole
the Cage on Sixth pulses,
sweats, swooshes, hot concussion as players
play for keeps.
|
