1510 1 1
|
There is no Vinny’s Liquor store as far as she can tell. She begins to think there is something odd, that people are jerking her chain, sending her on a fruitless mission. It feels familiar, like sorority hell week. Maybe there is no liquor store at al
|
1510 8 7
|
|
1510 11 10
|
44 miles out
the gauntlet of Red River pines
cast shadows pointing north.
|
1510 9 5
|
Now that I am dead, my god will fight your god...
|
1510 4 0
|
She wanted wolf cubs. Not kittens, not husky pups given as infant gifts with red bows around their scraggy necks. No, she wanted wolf cubs. Even when it grew to pace the length of her hallway - proud as men - she could not love it. …
|
1510 4 1
|
Rye goods
* Cracker brot: best practices
* Recipes: never embellish!
* Boughten: what to avoid
|
1510 6 3
|
It started like this: just him saying, "Nice to meet you, Marie," and me, while I just said his own name back to him, at the same time thinking, "I want you to take me to a hotel room someday, Frederick. I think I’ll like the way you’d make me feel...
|
1510 10 4
|
Jasmine as skeined skins… of liquid hers, by willow courts, the lychee's water wains: as apple-moats flush fawn in russet light, through cherry floats, the leopard-dots of dawn. Branch to branchlet green …
|
1509 3 3
|
Satan is a wide-eyed Pollyanna mime who communicates with a ventriloquist dummy that corrects my grammar, speaks in internet acronyms, tells me that I’d be a lot prettier if I just smiled more and lost fifteen pounds, and nags me about how all my problems
|
1509 1 0
|
Peggy woke up in the bedroom smelling burned pumpkin and she instantly knew her husband Tim had remained unconscious and insensible on the couch again and let the candle burn down. She and Lennon had watched him the previous night take control of the…
|
1509 0 0
|
Everybody knew Billy Miller. He had messy hair and crooked teeth that he hid behind a thin-lipped smile. He and his friend Jimmy Rodgers, who everyone called Cock on account of his red hair that stuck up like a comb, were inseparable. They liked to ste
|
1509 1 1
|
King's splendid stronghold Pressing down the earth below Broken by the grass
|
1509 1 0
|
Pay attention: our names were Bobby, Didi, Joanie, Mitch and Sam. It was popular in those days to wear big name buttons across your chest, and we’d line up side-by-side as we watched our reflections affix said buttons, anchoring them to our stiff lapels
|
1509 1 0
|
While the tea was steeping, Ms. Darcy unwrapped the package. The book was lovely. It had nice heavy paper and the print was a good size for reading. The cover was glossy and not too showy, and Ms. Darcy thought it would look just right on her shelf.
|
1509 6 4
|
Corina's skin is a circus tent. Her red-striped peppermint scars are a reminder of Christmas and family traditions. The obedient poodles of her childhood dreams jumped through hoops of fire until they became bald and grotesque. Poor dears, now, they no longer yap. They…
|
1509 13 12
|
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…
|
1509 5 5
|
She called it EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Basically, it means training a part of your brain to longer associate trauma with a specific side of the brain. This meant that she had to direct all traffic of the repressed memory to a new…
|
1509 1 0
|
["LIKE SAND THROUGH THE HOURGLASS ... SO ... ARE THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES!"]
|
1509 0 0
|
As airplanes fly low over her children playing in the kiddie pool on the front lawn, Maureen learns something else about her father's new house that lies in the flight path of an international airport.
|
1509 2 2
|
There was a man dressed in stately attire. His name was Abacus, which maybe you find strange, but then keep this in mind: it is, after all, just a name.
|
1508 4 2
|
Although badly educated, and although the Michoacána fought to deny it, she held the complex notion that borders are not abrupt lines, simple artifacts of geography and cartography.
|
1508 9 2
|
What is the meaning of you?
|
1508 7 4
|
There is a rock somewhere with the truth of the sky in it, the glitter of otherworldly charms that falsify the ugliness of the literal.
|
1508 2 0
|
Enid closes her bedroom door when she changes her clothes but leaves it ajar when she's doing her face; is she hoping some small talk might reach her dainty ears?
|
1508 4 2
|
There is nothing literal about the color of strawberries. It is a beauty too celestial for this world. It can only be imagined.
|
1508 3 2
|
Her students read their work aloud in class, haltingly, sometimes proudly, and their willingness amazed Miriam. They were immigrants and retirees, carpenters, security guards, Indian nannies, Iranian escapees. She loved their odd word choices, the lack of editorial impulse.…
|
1508 10 4
|
I do this when I think of you. Today we took the first steps towards you're never here.
|
1508 7 4
|
I don’t want to debate polemics while I’m sweaty and naked. I just want my hair cut.
|
1508 5 2
|
Ben considered his options in the taxi to Charles De Gaulle airport.
|
1508 2 2
|
I look down at my free of clothing genitalia and curiously note that the testicles sprout from above my erect penis, and my scrotum is so taut, hard and shriveled as to conjure squished images of a gigantic pink peanut.
|