1716 12 12
|
Your mother is a great and dying bird. Once, she tended her grand feathered nest. Once, she preened.
|
171633
|
They came early and parked up, under cover of the night and the giant oak. I only know this because people told me afterwards. Watching us, they were. It was six o'clock before they smashed their way in, scaring the three of us out of our wits. Baby Billy screamed the place…
|
171600
|
"Did I have a dream, or did the dream have me?" - Rush, "Nocturne"
|
171665
|
Resting bitch face strikes again.
|
17161811
|
hoping for a happy outcome/
like a kindly voice on the line
|
171687
|
But what if it grew into a nasty tea party-ish bimbo right winger -- a little Michelle Bachmann nubbin?
|
171663
|
After work and wine, I Take some red food coloring and empty it Into my bath water. I submerge myself and open my eyes Like looking backwards at the world through A liquid sunset. I push myself under water, squeaking Feet…
|
1716109
|
Mosaics are a trick of the eye, seeming
|
171621
|
Judith was a bed wetter. Judith was a first-year college student and she was embarrassed that she wet the bed.
|
171633
|
You were sitting on dark leather meringue, wearing slit ivy, epilated thighs sliding through, roots showing beneath your anaemic skin, fighting with the pale bluegreen of your veins. Quills extended from your left hand, bent about 10.2 degrees or so.
|
1716155
|
"when I say bag, what I mean to say is…"
|
17162315
|
I am long of tooth, too, and when I go, maybe a box with my ashes inside will join the boxes containing the cats’ remains.
|
1716106
|
Rarely is Quay Street so clean,
Monday in rain,
Neactain’s ticking over with
Slow jazz and crosswords,
Stout and steaming anoraks.
|
171610
|
Sophie hoped that Ryan would just stay in the bathroom and never come out. Her stomach turned just thinking about him, but wealthy nerds were easier to work than wealthy regular guys. No self-esteem, no experience with women…no problem.
|
1715113
|
“Your husband is an asshole, isn’t he?” he asks.
|
1715108
|
That's demeaning enough, but not as hard to take as the customers. They're all jaded hipsters, thumb diddling smartphone freaks, pretending their online interactions actually count as relationships and that “tweets” are real conversations. It's sad, reall
|
171541
|
Each drip off the corrugated plastic sheeting made a tinny sound that he could hear from deep within the damp sleeping bag and layers of blankets where he was trying to sleep.
|
171564
|
...the knives she laid out on the porch before her husband left her, washed and dried, set neatly by copper pennies.
|
171521
|
I knew I spoke out of turn when I asked my father's old friend Charlie Jobe what he thought would come of moving to the veterans' camp, or "Village of the Deranged", as the newspaper has since taken to calling it. That was their description after all the
|
171544
|
The only silver lining? The man in my life and I are in this together.
|
171511
|
so I tighten hands with my castaway and say/you failed to impress in your folded peacock dress
|
171523
|
① / empty space / not black / not white / not noise / blanck
|
171586
|
the swan drives a car ( window down; wing half hanging out ) …
|
1715149
|
I crave the confines of the convent
|
171585
|
When the cab dropped Frank at his address at seven that evening, he noticed the lights were on in Michiko’s apartment.
|
171454
|
It turns out I know a thing or two about momentum. I know, I know. Like the crescendo of your bicycle wheels. Like the force the florist put on the stems the day Linda died. The way my fingers spin between planetary mass. This is how I know I’m not real
|
1714199
|
I know this: the sky is vast here//
and the sun unforgiving/
to any architecture not the best
|
171400
|
Jenny knew never to mistake sex for love. Jenny's mother, who couldn’t stand the way her latest lover looked at her daughter, gave Jenny to the Department of Human Services, where Jenny celebrated her twelfth birthday as a ward of the State of Arkansas. J
|
1714209
|
feeling empty as the
bottom of a bottle
dry as a bone
in death valley alone
|
1714137
|
That year, if you asked Al, was truly the best of times, the worst of times.
|
