1739 15 9
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173954
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The night before leaving, we have French toast and red wine in Matthew's kitchen, our packs and sleeping bags and tents surrounding us, looming like golems. Because we're nervous, and a little drunk, the conversation inevitably turns to grammar. "I'm sure I learned…
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173943
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"this is the year I'm going to plant a yucca tree in the garden."
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173942
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He had thought of the walk down to Mrs Greensmith’s shop when he and all the men beside him reckoned they’d “had it” that time when II SS Panzer-Division had fought like gods for Hill 212.
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17391310
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173886
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You lazy fuckwit! You half-assed shithead!
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173864
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The bartender keeps asking what you smell and you say: lemons, oak, and pear. I smell lust. We move to the reds. Pinot Noir. Cabernet Sauvignon. Port.
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1738117
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He got tired of the pool party, the chit-chat, the suburban posturing, and he decided to swim home.
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1738106
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They couldn’t have done it better if they’d waved guns around in the air.
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173821
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On a hot summer day in downtown San Francisco, a flasher gets more than he bargains for when the woman he flashed at a coffeehouse pulls out a gun.
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173800
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What's the protocol for telling people your spouse has cancer? How do you tell your son, your friends, your co-workers? How do you tell your mother? How do you tell her mother?
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173864
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It’s all a matter of warped mirrors. As in the multi-mirrored passage I stood before as a boy
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173898
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When the storm broke, my late aunt's dog
fetched five favourite bones from his corner, and arranged a crude protective circle.
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17381713
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17381312
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Myrna came home from her new, midnight shift, waitressing job at the Waffle House saying she was sorry but she couldn't take any more gray-haired Jesus-types with their dollar bills held high, releasing a few so they would flutter, as if borne by wings, onto the tables as…
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173820
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The inhabitants of the surrounding neighborhood steered clear of the Lot, mindful of its existence, its countless drags of scrap, drenched with the fused association of many scenes and emotions from memory and experience. Left to its own devices, the place is now…
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1738109
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Abominables do roam the earth; I know it.
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173866
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We touch the places now, feel the hardness of bone...
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173800
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Ann had the vague idea that they would get it all worked out, and somehow, by tonight, she’d be in Robert’s arms again, and he’d be the old Robert, the man she’d known 15 years ago. She had no way of knowing, of course, that a Robert was going to
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173810
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"Well if we break for lunch at the same time wanna sit with me? I got fruit roll-ups I'll share."
Cory looked up at the boy, removing her hand from the water only to brush a lock of dark hair from her eyes. He was still smirking, jaw crunching, saliva
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173831
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Let us be stranded in the Andes and have to eat human flesh or at least toothpaste to survive! Let there be an earthquake! Let there be a flood! Let there be a tornado, a new ice age, an invasion from Mars. Only: let me survive.
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173864
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But I had learned from ingesting Roberto’s glitter-eyed fear, it could make you never close enough, and then, never far enough away. And both at the same time.
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173711
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I was enchanted with the suppleness and intensity of her movement and slowly edged to hide myself askew from the jam as not to disturb her.
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173710
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It’s the small stuff. Always. A conversation with a stranger, brief yet so connected it overwhelms you. These encounters can move me beyond my reality, little reminders that, if you just crack the window a little, something very special can blow in.
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173776
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I pay for 3 Trump Troll Dolls and a package red licorice twizzlers and head back toward the door. Dancing Gnome Girl is there to greet me. I stick a twizzler in the teeth of the donation pail.
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173721
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Once a month I fuck the boss. It’s not part of my job description. We have a meeting in her office, after thirty minutes she opens the door to what appears to be a storeroom but is actually a well-appointed fuck chamber ...
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173732
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“Emerald Leaf Borers, Dutch Elm Disease and Gypsy Moths blow through here like the Plagues of Egypt,” said Rafe, sipping from his glass of Parallel 44 wine. “You'd think we'd get more than a few days of good weather for all the parasites we feed.” …
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173782
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Liszt, Piano Sonata in B minor. I don't like it but I can't stop listening. It doesn't fit my mood, or the high plains landscape, or the early evening, pink and blue, pastel colored sky.
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173744
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“We don’t need to kiss.” I say coyly, morphing the angles of my body to look cute, irresistible. It would be easier if I’d brushed my hair. “Pretend I’m a prostitute.” I instruct, ”They don’t kiss their clients.” It’s a reference I’ve made before, but not
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173770
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I am a scavenger. I sit on the telephone wire, a ravenous vulture watching a man and a woman arguing across the street. The clouds remind me of ashy marshmallows I found in a fire pit yesterday. The woman starts violently shoving the man; he stumbles…
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