1715 5 3
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Although still uncertain of whether she was a she fish or a he fish (she definitely hated being an it fish), the fish liked what she saw of Nags Head. Finally, a world that gave her a choice. And felt no need to verify whether she was a real she fish, or just a he fish…
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171530
|
She burst
Into the glass shop
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171532
|
They could have heard a pin drop in the car for the rest of the ride to her house, where she looked at him one last time and found nothing admirable, nothing memorable about him.
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17152015
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The boys drank in one room. The girls in another. Always the same, no matter the letters.
Greek Letters.
Shabby sofa on the burnt-out lawn.
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171565
|
Is every librarian a poet at heart? I don't know, but a group of librarians recently put their heads together and came up with these library-themed Valentine's Day poems: Roses are red Your book's overdue You've had it for months Which is…
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171584
|
He had become an accessory to a murder.
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171564
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And then, and then, and then! After all that, this. After all that bullshit with her Dad, the Associate Principal, the idiotic counselor, and that psychotic police officer, after all that, this: a dead black cat. Blocking her path! Right in the middle of the street! …
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171542
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So begins your new career in the car service business. In some ways you enjoy it, too. Sitting alone in the cab each day, totally your own boss; you get a surge of excitement inside thinking about the money you'll make in a way that requires so little work. Clearing two…
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171566
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He hung up and I sang some whiney lyric about wanting him back. You know the songs that say the same shit: I’m an idiot. Love me anyway. I’m Velcro with nothing to stick to and you’re a nappy surface that gives me a reason to exist.
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171553
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Now that school is back in session, we move through our days like cage fighters, tagging in and out of matches: The Battle of the Bottle, The Diaper Duel, The Pout Bout. So while I'm assembling a casserole for tomorrow, Susan feeds Margot. While she washe
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1714188
|
I told him he was just paying for his sins. He gave me a look. "Why me?" he asked.
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1714138
|
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171445
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Jack would have felt betrayed, and my parents alarmed, had they ever suspected me of playing with Jack's guns, but I found the temptation overwhelming.
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171471
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Space, blank, uninterrupted, but then a fissure, a crack, a corridor, and down it you're walking.
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17141010
|
One day we went for a hike. We climbed a small mountain. It’s called Mission Peak. We got about halfway up a steep trail, decided that was far enough. We embraced. She said “I love you,” and I said, “I love you, too.”
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171467
|
When he took Medieval German Lit in graduate school, Ackermann read Der Ackermann aus Böhmen by Johannes von Tepl. His professor was amused both by his last name and that his grandparents were Germans from Bohemia. Of course, only his grandmother was from Bohemia and…
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171431
|
It's Granny hauling her crooked soul into heaven. Guess who I stole that image from?
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171400
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O’Toole signaled again with two fingers. The night was young. Suddenly I had to go home to my lovely Penny. All I knew was I didn’t want to end up drinking at a hole like this with my head down on the bar.
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17141213
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My wife goes away for a few days to the little town where Hitchcock filmed The Birds.
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171374
|
not that we ever had before
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171300
|
Ben tossed the newspaper aside, muttering. Carol, curled up on the sofa, peered past the glasses at the tip of her nose and past the crossword puzzle.
"What?"
"The Brits wanted to fight rather than be taken hostage. They had an escort boat ridin
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171397
|
Give me back my / singularity, my tristesse, my photo ID.
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171377
|
My wife and I were looking for a "fixer-upper." We were strange that way. We were leaving a rental which had cat tunnels built into the walls. One villa we toured had a heartbeat. In the basement, in place of a well pump, was a heart made of fibrous roots which had…
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171373
|
Her skirt is so short, said the teenage girls to each other. I was 7 years old. I said: she looks like a slut. They laughed; I blushed. Later, the slut smiled at me. I tried to find the teenage girls but they were gone. I wanted to say: it's actually a pair of…
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171396
|
It's because poetry would not do
because the fireflies were alive that night, aflame
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171383
|
I think I’ll get a tattoo. Not just any tattoo, one I’ll regret. I’ll catch people peering at it, trying to interpret the twists and swirls of the black ink on my fair skin.
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1713129
|
All young and loud and big and I swear her face like a lighthouse lamp, glowing—I remember thinking, ‘She’s drunk at nine in the morning.’
|
171398
|
. . . catching her breath somewhere between ecstasy and surprise. . .
|
1713136
|
Skim. The stone slipped across the top of the water. The sea was a battleship grey with a liver of cerulean, foaming at the lips its puckered kisses smacking on the shore.
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171265
|
“Can I feel it?” he reached his hands out immediately, expecting I’d say yes. I am the type to always say yes, right?
“Sure.” I confirmed, swallowing back my fear of his touch. He didn’t seem himself, like this. I led his hands to my hips and let them
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