1630 6 3
|
That’s what she left behind, and I put it in my mouth and swallowed.
|
16301513
|
We lived on the edge of a tiny Iowa town, and picked corn fields were steps away.
|
163032
|
He kept the lawn mowed at the perfect height. He mowed it twice a week to one inch. Some weeks he mowed it a third time for good measure.
|
163000
|
an ominous figure of fear and grace a ball moves back and forth
|
16302011
|
We invent our beauties//
as we find them and engineer/
our horrors
|
163030
|
As they left, Roddy kicked over a statue of a blindfold and half-naked goddess of justice. "I piss on you Justice!" he yelled. The bailiff pushed him out the door as he continued his rant, inaudible.
|
16302713
|
It’s beautiful to look at and to hold/
though true musicians would be appalled/
by the black plastic
|
1629106
|
In the small hours, when the crackling of the embers had stopped and the room had gone cold, the boiler kicked in and the pipes began to clang. He was half-roused out of his sleep, and then slipped under again to dream of Marley's fettered ghost.
|
162954
|
Beneath the crosshatch gazes of the satellites and above the maze of sound, seahorse clouds exhale a glaucoma haze before they are absorbed into surveillance footage
|
1629117
|
War came home tonight. We weep and hug, while he stares over our shoulders, like the statue we'll make of him. We pour a drink for his shaky hands, wheel him past his friends the dead, and lie to each other about other, far off places as if we knew.
|
162900
|
Astrid hadn't always hated him.
They met at the Beta house in the fall of his junior year. Typical Friday night. Stoned, drinking beer. He and Red Chapman sitting in their room playing guitars. The girls in their blues jeans. The guys from the house hi
|
1629139
|
|
162954
|
Their love was doomed at the onset, yet they engaged in it anyway, heedless of the numerous error messages and critical runtime failures. Abort, Retry, Fail? They selected Retry over and over.
|
162942
|
{A} So I think maybe I am a robot. If I was a robot, I would do lewd things, metallic (cold, hard, shiny, heavy, malleable, loud, acrid, industrial, immovable, unstoppable) things. I would do the things I do in my dark powerless dreams. People would understand and…
|
1629157
|
It is a sunny day in the autumn of the patriarch.
|
162964
|
He had stared at the back of his neck for so long that images of his nape flashed into view randomly throughout the day like interfering signals from a station just out of reach, DESIRE CHANNEL, or something, reminding him of his skewed priorities, his fa
|
162921
|
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…
|
162941
|
Paul Shaffer and his cloned henchman Mini Paul come rattling through the early morning sky in a modified World War I biplane.
|
162900
|
Gone Heather,
with her hands in her hair,
silent for help,
over-involved now scared.
|
162962
|
If we thought that love was gone
that out of sweetness none remained
|
162811
|
He thought the scarab was bad luck. I knew too little about omens to argue.
|
1628137
|
Here’s how you do it. First you get a ladder, a long one.
|
162876
|
He hasn't had a wedding ring in years. When George's knuckles began to swell — a little arthritis — his ring dug into his finger so bad his wife Loren took him to the ER and had it cut off. The ring, not the finger. He never knew there was a tool to cut rings,…
|
162811
|
The muster zone was south of U.S. 119, off the Halleck Road. The search began on a large parcel, some 75 acres of farmland, property of one Mr. Shakelford. Shakelford had allowed the earth to go wild; brush, thistle and small…
|
162810
|
He searched for something deserving of the word “bestowed,” something so rare as to horrify the clerics of ordinariness.
|
162833
|
I know I’m slipping
into my mother’s skin. I answer the phone
with her voice; her hands grind the coffee beans.
And who is this listening to NPR in the morning
while the fresh-faced girls in the neighborhood trudge toward school,,
peonies han
|
162872
|
When the black cloth falls on you all food tastes like airline food. Every song sounds like Barry Manilow. Every poem sounds like Rod McKuen. It’s all just noise to you now.
|
162800
|
"Dude!" James smacked Peter's head. "Don't be a jerk. Did you get a look at her or not?"
Peter said, "I didn't really see her face. Is she hot? Do you wanna kiss her face?"
|
162862
|
"What is a vageena?" I wanted to know.
|
162811
|
Perhaps a blue person is more alive underneath than a red. Red is eye-catching and flashy, but blue is substantial, secretive. Of course, blood is red, and there’s nothing more substantial than blood, but we’re on blue at the moment, and the thought
|
