1808 2 2
|
"Honey," I called out to my wife. "Why do we have Spam in the closet?"
"You mean unsolicited bulk messages sent electronically?"
"No--the canned, precooked meat product made by the Hormel Corporation."
|
180800
|
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.
|
180866
|
No one writes epics anymore. Why? Perhaps it's because we no longer share mythologies. Once there was a shepherd, and now there is a Google bus loaded with pricks. Yes, you say, but they are good at math. Each and every one of them. And this is true. I envy them…
|
180854
|
He reveled in the chase, giddy when just out of arm’s reach. When to catch him, that was the question.
|
180876
|
He leans in close then, close enough that when he speaks, his words tiptoe out and tuck me in.
|
180800
|
You can’t start living in The Netherlands just like that; you need to be registered first. Once an official has confirmed you’re the person you claim to be, you can start in a job. Once an employer has confirmed you’re employed, you can apply for yo
|
180754
|
|
18071611
|
I don't know how long I was down on the curb. When I came around it took several minutes to realize that it wasn't the moon overhead at all but a street light and the sticky feeling stuff I was lying in was, yeah, my blood. And the hand on my shoulder wasn't hers. I…
|
180700
|
Boy meets girl. Girl meets boy. It was an unexpected meeting, but one that was sure to bring a lot of change for both. They met at a work event. Some friends wanted to put together a company and they had both been invited to be part of the project. Boy smiled. Girl remained…
|
180700
|
After Jonesy entered the bear habitat, he walked up to the biggest bear in the group and punched it square in the nose. The bear was visibly startled. I mean, bears don’t get punched that often. And there’s a reason: bears are ferocious animals.
|
180777
|
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…
|
1807106
|
I had a meeting with the editor of a well-known magazine. She said, “I think your paradigm got stuck up your monomyth.” “Oh dear. Is that bad?” “Bad? You want to be a writer, don't you?” “Well, I did. I'm not so sure now.…
|
180761
|
ANTHONY I decide after Jill and I have dinner at her flat and smoke an enormous joint that I need to call Tyler, a conversation I'm not particularly looking forward to. I leave and she's not happy, but I tell her I have homework and we kiss a little bit…
|
180700
|
Walking home, carrying his guitar case, Jed felt the sums of his life adding up to dangerously high numbers, the deadly inertia of vaguely comfortable apathy swallowing his time. His moment would soon be fading. Because, like many young men before him, Jed…
|
180798
|
This is the parallel room I keep my heart in. Got a solo fireplace. I don't want to invite anything else into the story. It doesn't matter if no one knocks on the door ever again. I'm too shy to hope for much more than a couple of Interesting shadows…
|
180731
|
My small kitchen has barely enough room to turn around in, yet I had the feeling I was being watched. When I experience it again, just seconds later, I realize it was eyes watching, actual eyes, not a camera or machine.
|
180796
|
Every time she tries to sleep they come; legions of small armored things scuttle claws aloft across the purple sand as soon as she stops moving.
|
180632
|
A married woman requests a butterfly tattoo that won't please her husband from an old tattoo artist.
|
180662
|
We’re on our way out, my brother and me, to the graveyard.
|
18061513
|
I am eternal/
as long as the power holds
|
180631
|
1. there's nothing more to say about it and I don't want to be drawn2. beautiful she couldn't hear me anyway I was desperate and there were moths3. they'd replaced his head with a picture of the moon he looked4. none of them were speaking English more like a ticking a…
|
1806137
|
His note said: “I’m sick of low attendance.”
|
180666
|
The coffin-sized pit in his basement wasn’t freshly dug.
|
180697
|
The day you came to the wedding the sky was so, so brightly July./ I saw my face where I left it the last time . . . .
|
180600
|
“He's the one who took five tries to find your vein during your last blood draw, right?” This question spilled from the row of twenty EKG machines that now made up the hospital building's larynx
|
180666
|
Now, at last, she finds what she's been searching for. Worms. Like bitty pale larva, like half-moons of air trapped under fingernails. She thinks she sees one twitch; she blinks more furiously and hates herself for it.
|
180667
|
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…
|
180632
|
We fold it end over end, meeting in the middle where she takes it, and I let go...
|
180620
|
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.”
|
180684
|
"This tastes like goat cheese," I said.
|
