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A Body Divided: Memoir
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When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it broug
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“It's going to be hitting around the mid-90's tomorrow” said the television expert. “So what? Like 1995?” “Maybe, perhaps even '96” “Does this mean I should break out my Backstreet Boys record?” …
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‘Didn't you used to have a daughter?'
The tense and phraseology jarred, but he was inarticulate not ignorant, awkward rather than unaware of how it sounded and she smiled at him.
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To hear my name, called out across the Roman stones on a bridge in Regensburg through the languid March drizzle,
was to breathe again as my head burst through the water.
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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...
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Such behavior will result in no disciplinary action only: 1) if all blinds are drawn; 2) all doors are locked; and 3) loud groaning is masked by appropriate use of the volume control on the classroom’s closed-circuit TV set.
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A spark is a gouged word: stewed to annihilate, scrambled, botched in a pot to dry. Lead us to the quiver, let us tremble. Noon, we paw nails under rugs, run fingertips over books, rip cupboards from hinges and spiral open the machine, for the creature is near the roof or…
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Bill was queasy, short of breath, his chest tightening. He was next. How he hated this game of confession. It was harder than going to a priest, which at least allowed a measure of anonymity. True, these were friends, yet, in terms of the game, he was vastly…
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[marbles] [blither-blather] [blarg]
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It’s beautiful to look at and to hold/
though true musicians would be appalled/
by the black plastic
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There is a push-up on the ceiling. I don't know how to get it down. I've tried hitting it with a broom. That just made it blow steam. I asked my wife, did you do push-ups on the ceiling? She did. Why? It's easier up there. The cat doesn't bother me. Well, you left…
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Someone had shown me a page on the internet where writers could have their stories analyzed, seeing whose work their piece was similar to. Normally, I only went on the computer to find apartment listings and pornography.
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Cellulite is legal to have, either way.
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When I was 17, they said in an e-mail that you would get too drunk to function and that you would abuse them, verbally, and do way more than embarrass them in public. They said you'd yell at them and hit their mom for any reason. They put a restraining order on you.…
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"I'll tell you one thing I don't want to see, armed confrontation, leading to domestic warfare."
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fat furry marmots who play hide and seek
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I am in the hallway, but I don’t sense it. That is to say: I don’t feel my body. I am like a phantom, a limbless entity floating, flailing.
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Does flight exhilarate the sparrows
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It was all I was convinced / in designing the encounter.
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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.
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When I was young in the suburbs, there was an empty lot across from our house. Bulldozers cleared the trees, shredded the bushes, and piled mounds of dirt three times as tall as I. But they never built a house.The dirt mounds, chain-link fences, and neon signs were…
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She called it phantom energy. She said it was costing us money every month. A few cents here and there, sure, but it all added up.
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Moon Boy sits atop the hill's crest and watches Moon Girl.
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You can use your shoelaces or an Ace bandage. Loop a belt around your neck and toss the loose end over a shower curtain or closet pole. Pull. Try to lift yourself off the ground.
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Matthias Fenstermacher loved onions, but hated slicing them, and so he labored to produce a tearless variety. His first attempt was indeed tearless--instead of weeping, the slicer was overcome by fits of uncontrollable giggles. The potential hazard was
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the future wrapped up in a dream
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We are prisoners of anticipation.
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What happened then was not entirely innocent or spontaneous. I had been impressed by a scene in Some Came Running by James Jones, where the teenage writer sneaks his girlfriend home and makes love to her on his childhood's bed.
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Joaquin Phoenix has inspired me to quit writing and purse my true lifelong passion.
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