1759 12 12
|
They'd taken so much: ivory, rubber, copper, gold. Wealth for the grabbing. No remorse.
|
175985
|
They are plastering on lipstick in pay-to-enter toilets
around the corner from the mosques, where old men
sit on back streets selling toilet seats, spices by the
shovel, flashlights, and Audrey Hepburn t-shirts
|
175921
|
Everybody knew it would happen. It didn’t happen exactly when or how they thought it would, but nonetheless it happened.
“I told you it would happen,” a bearded man told his wife.
|
1759138
|
A lifeboat came by in the night,
And I finally saw we were sinking.
|
175963
|
During the day we search for truffles. I have a pig named Henry. He is a big help. He wanders the forest sniffing for truffles like a parable of porcine inquisitiveness. He knows what he is doing. He is not just a pig. Nor ordinary pig. He is a French pig
|
175974
|
It was impossible
that you wouldn't love me
|
175974
|
You're on the Ferris wheel, and the wind is blowing just a little bit, and the sky is invisible behind a wash of white clouds, and your little yellow box tips when you look down, down to the fairway swinging. In the boxes below grandmothers are shrieking …
|
175911
|
“Man, that Fats just nothin’ but a powerhouse, nothin’ but ‘Jesus Rolled Away the Stone’ and them Cats his apostles.” La KeeSha replied, “Ya’ll a real Blues Daddy now.”
|
175963
|
Suds, like gossamer bandages at her wrists, concealed the turbulence below but could not relieve it.
|
1758148
|
And she's dying like someone who's tried living and failed.
|
1758127
|
Val walks through the world, absorbed in the day to day. A plainspoken narrator drones on in his mind. The nondescript voice marks time to the beat of Val's banal footfall, hums along with the whir of Val's modest, midsize sedan. The narration is loudest in the twilight…
|
175832
|
He lit another reed - a new score orchestrating in his head - his thoughts swirling around the older man; there was something else going on here…
|
175830
|
She burst
Into the glass shop
|
175811
|
The pear is a bruise. Feels like desperation in the light, it looks soft and blue. She wants to touch it and doesn’t want to. How the blood gathers under the blue and the body grows tender. Swells. Slowly.
|
1758106
|
are you like the rest of us and you disagree with war yes i said i disagree with war and he said only one man agrees with war but he won t go to the war
|
175872
|
The ice in my drink provides ample cooling. The brew strength of my tea is just such that it combines in a pleasing fashion with the melting ice. My mind is clear and my belly absent hunger. I am completely sated from any physical desire at this very mome
|
175800
|
‘They will follow, but we have to go now’
‘Wait , I can see something familiar...’
|
175811
|
Normally I would have never drank such a wine, but it was late on a Friday evening and the bottle was on the house...
|
175863
|
Bootsy awoke with a hangover that only brain surgery could cure, a hangover that caused a seam to open in the known universe, leaving Bootsy on one side while all other matter sped away, away.
|
175820
|
I paused in case she said more. Then, “He’s very faint but he wants to talk.”
She leaned forward, chin almost resting on the grey-haired woman in front of her. “Tell him to shout.”
|
1758103
|
Often I eat lunch at the hospital. The cafeteria may be the best place to eat in town.
|
175810
|
you and i exist
outside of the chaos and noise
entwined in eternal embrace
|
175732
|
A married woman requests a butterfly tattoo that won't please her husband from an old tattoo artist.
|
175700
|
You know what parents have to do to get an Xbox? They don't just stand in line and someone hands them an Xbox, OK? That's sacrifice. They have to sacrifice and sacrifice and sacrifice. I mean, I chase alpacas a mile every night in subfreezing conditions,
|
1757119
|
Be careful when you choose your muse,
for she may be a siren.
|
175722
|
Christmas Eve arrives with a relief that the season of joy will soon be over so I can feel the pain I am denying myself. Rosie presses her face against the kitchen window, leaving ghostlike impressions of the tip of her nose and her lips on the glass tha
|
175700
|
I went out behind Parker's house and saw Darrell's tent set up in the grass. The flaps of the pup tent were open. I could see him through the mosquito netting. He had a Coleman lamp burning and lay on his back in his underwear on top of his sleeping bag.
|
1757123
|
|
175721
|
Four nights out of sevenI will lay with youFour nights out of sevenIt's the best I can do In the day, we will bake our breadAt night, ha, we will break our bed!Four nights out of seven, I will be with you
|
175732
|
”My goodness how that child nurses hope,” Edward’s Grandad would often say, “were it not for her where indeed would this family be?”
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