1679 21 13
|
The virtuoso tortures a violin/
in homage to Paganini.
|
167833
|
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
|
16781211
|
and watch the bird play and squirrel play/
and the twitching of cottontail noses
|
16782311
|
Mist falls from the opaque sky and splatters crystals in your hair...
|
167886
|
You speak English so well.
|
167800
|
Rosey streaks through the city, dragging a flooded umbrella.
|
167830
|
You see the ocean for the first time on our honeymoon. Your large feet dig deep into the muddy sands of the Maryland coastline as your blue eyes swell at the infinite water before you. I wrap my…
|
1678147
|
We flew./
In my dreams, I can fly.
|
167833
|
He didn't want to read his father's statement. Yet still he lingered, poised over the kitchen table, where his father had left it.
|
167820
|
My sister Janis called me from Berlin and said to turn on the news. You could see the thick flurries of snow that were falling there and the flat feathers of peoples' breaths issuing from their mouths as they took turns swinging pick-axes, standing on top
|
167894
|
We shot out the windows of an abandoned building nearby so as to trick them into thinking we’d had snipers stationed in that building.
They shot at the abandoned building.
|
167866
|
This tall, very blonde, very female, friend of mine. . . .
|
167894
|
We weren't supposed to talk about Jimmy's glass eye. We just had to watch it stare at us all wonkie, without knowing a thing about it.
|
1678126
|
a little bitter for the better
|
167810
|
But that night we were happy, looking all around at the bright lights of the several cities that we could see.
|
167700
|
“Wait, so you’re Burt Lancaster? You’re not tall enough to be Burt Lancaster.” I popped a hand over my mouth. Wine as truth serum would do me no favors.
|
167762
|
Two women sat at a small round table near the sidewalk waiting for the same man.
|
1677129
|
|
167797
|
I remember meeting you many years later.
|
16771312
|
I asked him where he hurt and he said everywhere.
|
167752
|
Maintaining a healthy love life requires effort and professional advice, and Your Love Life columnist would be happy to assist you.
|
1677219
|
|
167773
|
In every writer's room there is a bogeyman born in the closet, growing with every blot on the virgin sheet, feeding on the pain of writing, of solitude, the failure, the rage, the confusion, the helplessness, the fear, the humiliation. The narrower the…
|
167711
|
“It felt like the space under my skin had been filled with desert sand. I did not open my eyes for my body was covered with the dust. A camel could have walked over me and not noticed. I needed to wipe my eyes before I could open them and my body was froz
|
167787
|
I was at Mike's place when the call came. My brother sounded so accusing that I wanted to punch him in the face. But he was way upstate. "Dad died today," he said, as if I could have somehow known or prevented it. It was sudden. A heart attack. He was…
|
167722
|
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…
|
167721
|
She rolls up at school with the word MAYHEM marker-penned across her stomach, wrote so big the first and last letters graze each inner thigh bone. She says it's in honour of some rock star I never knew.
|
167740
|
"As the thing lurches upright, I can see now that it is an old woman with snake eyes… a dead old woman with snake eyes and peeling flesh. She is putrid and maggoty. She is coming right at us. She is my mother."
|
16772012
|
Our ironies don’t make us happy
|
167644
|
Moore doubted, perhaps, that readers could sympathize with a man who had killed someone for a cause or a girlfriend who forgave him. Perhaps she felt that maiming is (not) worse than murder. Perhaps she decided that the story should be about that.
|
