1873 6 5
|
He was a beautiful older man, late sixties, who reminded me of a movie star with a thick mane of silver hair parted neatly from left to right and eyes the color of that stretch of Pacific Ocean between San Pedro and Catalina Island, the calming blue of a carefree weekend…
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187353
|
Hunger only makes people hungry, but bad hair can ruin your whole day.
|
187332
|
Hair today...gone tomorrow
The sun beats down
on my balding crown.
|
187321
|
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.
|
187300
|
Tak Tuckerby was a racecar driver. He could drive a racecar fast and handle a racecar perfectly. Unfortunately, Tak could only drive in one direction.
|
1873135
|
That led to the first aid box on the bed at 3 in the morning, but what about those veggies?
|
187355
|
Alessandro was no ordinary demon (what demon is?), insofar as he had Constable Pulce's number. In demonly fashion he had Pulce's number in a way Pulce himself did not.
|
187276
|
Residual flashbacks; just tiny bright lightning bolts that flash in front of my eyes, just like standing watching a soaring bonfire on a cold and frosty November night, pinprick sparks flying up into the endless darkness of the night.
|
187286
|
Here I am in the city where we walked side by side, you had driven a great distance and lost your way somewhere where exits left the highway from both directions and unpredictably.
|
187263
|
In his fridge he had one piece of meat. He hadn’t been expecting me. I cooked it for him and watched him eat.
|
187221
|
I remember ...all the teenagers offered no-longer favored CDs, last year's cell phones, third-place trophies, team jerseys, played-out videogame cartridges, and candy-colored miniature stuffed animals...
|
1872123
|
I'm explicating Emily Dickinson when the alarm starts: three long, two short. Lockdown mode. Only there was nothing in the staff bulletin about a drill. So I tell the students to get down on the floor, away from the window. I open the classroom door and lock it from…
|
18721110
|
When her husband left she was not yet thirty
|
187221
|
the champagne foam cascades like cherry blossom ensnared in the first gales of spring
|
187233
|
“What is the sickness that you have?” Colin behind the glass wondered.
“Too much world,” said Anise Fish.
“We have that in common.”
|
187221
|
"Look, Ted, I'm on a timer. It's really hell here, you can't imagine. And I have a chance to get paroled early, if you do me a solid."
|
187232
|
A true Rowdies fan begins every conversation about the band with a legend. She would be impressed if he knew the story.
|
18721513
|
We lived on the edge of a tiny Iowa town, and picked corn fields were steps away.
|
18721110
|
Some of them are notorious tweakers. Nobody epitomizes the cowboy-outlaw biker more than the ironworkers, who are wired on Black Beauties they sell on breaks.
|
187201
|
“Don’t you wish it always ended that way? The right people fall in love? Romance leads to marriage? God, that was a great movie.”
|
187143
|
take back all the falderal
and friggin' fiddle dee dee
take back the mad murmuring
of ten minutes ago
|
187133
|
Things are a little out of hand. Information fills room after room after room. I have no bloody idea where I am. I have your photo, but the navigational coordinates are difficult to interpret. Where the hell are you, anyway? I don't like mazes — too much like…
|
187173
|
Susie watched the record, her mouth agape just slightly, the spinning vinyl unveiling the powerful sound of a voice she'd wanted to hear her whole life.
|
18711512
|
She wears three or four tattered sweaters on cool days. She pushes a basket borrowed from a grocery store. There is a plastic lawn bag in the basket with God knows what inside.
|
187100
|
From across the crowded bar, past the be-suited lobbyists and in between the plates of fried calamari and glasses of cabernet being hustled to and fro by the Salvadoran waiters, Travis could see that John had changed. Not much, but enough to be noticeable. A little grey…
|
187121
|
I look at that wall, it has piss-stain yellow paint and water scars from several years of leaky pipes. I say I wouldn’t mind that, if he took out some of that wall.
|
187134
|
Sunday, Nolan and I drop by the ice rink on 10th and Alma to watch the amateur hockey leagues battle it out in an unspoken yet assumed class war: the buff, unemployed rink bums who can grind ice, cross-check, and stick handle like the pros, versus the dou
|
187000
|
Beautiful,
a country left abandoned by the parade path.
The soldiers that typically occupy this place,
temporarily removed to neighboring lands;
congregating together,
backs to the native.
I benefit from the accidental diversion.
|
187000
|
"Did I have a choice? Could I just open my eyes, did I have to ‘see’ as he was telling me now I could? I decided to go for it. What did I have to lose? This was all a dream, too much driving to get here, too much reunion, too much food, too much beer. Or
|
18701612
|
It's the little things that trip us
up: a small hole in a level field,
an innocuous root in a well-trod
path, a disinclined sidewalk...
|
