1652 9 4
|
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.
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165276
|
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165267
|
The last night, I shivered in bed until three a.m.,
the blankets wouldn’t work,
or the socks,
or my tears,
but I reassured my heart
that my next love would be warmer.
He was.
And our air conditioning bill was so high we could’t afford it.
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1652118
|
Me and Dale chuck rocks at it.
|
16513723
|
in a puddle of water, the butterfly rests on a stone
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16511211
|
and watch the bird play and squirrel play/
and the twitching of cottontail noses
|
16511612
|
A little poem about prison
|
16514128
|
She pulled into the doorway. Uncertain where to spend the night. Certain there'd once been a place with food. Here. This place. She remembered. Curtains. Small tables. Coffee cups thick-handled and sturdy. Crockery.
Some words came back.
|
1651147
|
We flew./
In my dreams, I can fly.
|
16511412
|
Usually I’m the only guy in a roomful of women. Some of them are foxy, too.
|
165140
|
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. …
|
165120
|
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
|
1651118
|
I was sleeping the night of a hurricane party. I awoke to lightning flashes. They lit the undersides of descending clouds, and lit the shadows of scattering dancers. The hurricane must have turned inland.
|
165122
|
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…
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165132
|
Some claimed seeing him that first time in the grocery store staring in at the pints of Haagen-Dazs, his breath fogging the glass as his head rested against the heavy freezer doors, stinking in his Sasquatch suit. The second time he was…
|
165156
|
It's tough when muscle gets in the way of memory. The way pain is the only thing I can remember about certain things. Fifth grade, that's what I think of. I think of pain. Not just abstract pain, not some we'll get to it later adolescent angst or ennui.…
|
1651108
|
The next time I see you, I’m going to pretend you’re a stranger, and that I’m meeting you for the first time.
|
165130
|
You’ve known her since grade school and even though you’ve never copped a feel, it gave you a strange chill when you heard boys talking about her breasts, pressing against madras or chamois with some devilish life force, or how one day she’ll fuck l
|
165000
|
The church pews were straining at the crowds who had come to see David get saved. There was no salvation in the water really, but the Baptists preached the gospel of immersion. There was a certain Baptist church in Kentucky that pressured a man who'd been sprinkled to get…
|
165000
|
“Imagine a Shakespearean scholar coming upon an undiscovered work by the Bard. That’s how thrilling this is."
|
1650147
|
We sat in the weight room. The coach walked in with his clipboard and stood until we were quiet.
|
1650129
|
How to Boil Water
How to Cook an Egg
How to Eat
How to Think
How to Love
How to Die
|
165064
|
Luke was in the gutter, his face in stagnant water littered with cigarette butts, condom wrappers, and green shards of glass from broken beer bottles. A man was kicking him in the face with a boot the size of a U-boat, over and over and over again. Blood
|
165054
|
Everyone hoped to be assigned somewhere they could just drop in on their way home for Memorial Day weekend. Someone said, Blake, you’re single. You hate your family, don’t you?
|
165022
|
Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house they went, Will and his new girlfriend Emma from Atlanta for the annual family dinner and drunken disaster in Allendale.
|
165064
|
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…
|
165052
|
Ben considered his options in the taxi to Charles De Gaulle airport.
|
16501510
|
when the mirror cracks
my eyes won't cry
it's a perfectly
respectable (romance)
between her and i
|
165011
|
My sister, Bonnie, is busy with the dishes as I enter the kitchen; I toss the mail I was sorting through onto the table and look around for Sophie, my four-year-old daughter. "Bonnie, isn't she ready…
|
165000
|
O' madam, betwixt the pages A story professed to love A wonder of descriptive prose Delights read enraptured “My favorite book”, so you said O' madam, your heroine is flawed Wounding herself beyond measure And those she swears she…
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