1511 13 10
|
Sin by Nonnie Augustine After my mother died, I met Aunt Shirley. I found her in dozens of snapshots piled in falling apart cardboard boxes we hauled down from the attic. Small girls, with huge bows bobby-pinned right on top of…
|
151131
|
I suggested a threesome for her birthday. In jest, I thought. But here we are; me in my checkered Oxford, Katie in her red silk blouse, as planned. We're at this sushi place at the corner of 9th and Bentham. “Zuma.” I hate this restaurant, to tell you the…
|
151187
|
|
151120
|
The heart of those stars is a dab of yellow light.
The darkness of the blue night appears so deep
because the downward strokes of the actual sky
are interspersed with a violet that’s almost black,
|
151122
|
My friend once told me about this island of trash in the Pacific. He said that if you threw a piece of trash in any body of water it would find its way there somehow.
|
151163
|
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...
|
151092
|
What is the meaning of you?
|
151020
|
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?
|
151010
|
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
|
151011
|
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
|
15101110
|
44 miles out
the gauntlet of Red River pines
cast shadows pointing north.
|
151095
|
Now that I am dead, my god will fight your god...
|
151064
|
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…
|
15101312
|
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…
|
151055
|
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…
|
151041
|
Rye goods
* Cracker brot: best practices
* Recipes: never embellish!
* Boughten: what to avoid
|
151042
|
“I wrote a story about you today.”
|
150900
|
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
|
150942
|
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.
|
150911
|
King's splendid stronghold Pressing down the earth below Broken by the grass
|
150974
|
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.
|
150910
|
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.
|
150942
|
There is nothing literal about the color of strawberries. It is a beauty too celestial for this world. It can only be imagined.
|
150988
|
that doesn't need any words to arrive fully formed, or too many words to be believed in at all I should say, a little something we can simply send back and forth across your time and my space without having to talk at length about it, but being a …
|
150922
|
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.
|
150910
|
They hovered and darted but, after a while, they seemed to be always around him. Lapping at him like the mellow waves that stroked the muddy bank.
|
150910
|
["LIKE SAND THROUGH THE HOURGLASS ... SO ... ARE THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES!"]
|
150900
|
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.
|
150900
|
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
|
150922
|
I am heading to work. It's early and Clare is still asleep. When I hit the breezeway I realize that I forgot my keys. I walk back into the house and start rustling through the junk on the table by the door. After a moment I sense someone standing behind me and…
|
