1723 12 6
|
Every morning, Wilma's husband Richard would cross the street and visit with a neighbor, always after the neighbor's husband left for work. Wilma was a loner, never bothered with neighbors. She enjoyed sitting on her patio in her lounge chair,…
|
1723 10 6
|
Eight days before her 50th birthday they were married in their soft new pajamas, holding hands on his bed in the hospital. The pastor and witnesses wore protective hospital gowns and gloves; the patient was in isolation once again. A special dispensation from the head…
|
1723 0 0
|
Bill texted me at 3:44, invited me to join him at Chip's, where he was having a drink. Chip's Bar is a great dive, and I accepted without hesitation. Ten minutes later I was on a crowded bus filled mostly with fat people, and twenty minutes after that I was…
|
1723 0 0
|
For you –
because you deserve more effort
|
1722 11 6
|
A pinprick breaks the black/
and pins the spin of constellations/
around its still point.
|
1722 15 4
|
This cell the sole certainty,
all else steeped in mystery.
Why should we be here?
|
1722 0 0
|
Caster had always imagined the Consensus as a big room, as big as the world, filled with white space and people with quantum wings, flitting about, creating information. There were tinted bubbles for people to share for privacy, and the lights never went
|
1722 1 0
|
What else, H, is there to say about heartbreak? What else could it be but our hands, cupped as if holding water against our chests, then broken into halves. Or the picture of this one, pretending to load a gun. Or this one, soaked in smoke—asking for
|
1722 4 4
|
Momma takes us to the candle store next door where everything smells sweet
as she opens, closes glass lids, lets us lean our faces close, smell pumpkin, lavender,
trees...
|
1722 1 1
|
1. The sparrows' heads revolve slowly when you press the red button, but the boxing glove attachments don't work.2. A weird weaving of voices, unmusical harmony. One phrase punctures the texture: “The empty slot.”3. Poems are processed into more useful verbal…
|
1722 2 2
|
|
1722 16 13
|
He'd hung above her head for months.
|
1722 0 0
|
In the grip of a bad dream, she bolted awake, thinking she had heard the nightsounds of a tomcat crawling around her property.
It was some dreaded hour before dawn; she had no idea when. Her small, frail body was stiff, her breasts swollen and sore to
|
1721 7 7
|
It's important to make a sure sound. It's not impossible you know. It's just funny I suppose, like being in a dream of another dream. All these things could be mashed and tumbled together to make us one big clay hero, someone…
|
1721 5 5
|
I keep my love for you in me, /
like the egg of a worm,
|
1721 5 3
|
For reasons he couldn't fathom, his motorcycle only moved in reverse. He engaged the engine and lurched backward hard. He called a friend, a gear-head with perpetually dirty nails, asked him to look it over.
|
1721 16 12
|
She was as beautiful as flowers in a dream
|
1721 0 0
|
Alysia tried to focus on what was important, but it was too much to bear. She was ready to dive down when a shot of wind blew past her, causing her and Megumi to lose control over their gliders.
|
1721 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…
|
1721 12 10
|
The kid with a testosterone chip
Instead of a brain
|
1721 9 10
|
it's time for the cold, antiseptic
cloth to briskly remove the evidence.
|
1721 18 9
|
|
1721 7 5
|
Why flash?because the moments, the moments, they pass in flashes of brilliancethat shudder, death glow alightand nothing makes sense beyond nowand nothing will help me but meand I am not even enoughnot my thoughts or your nod of assentor even the deep sigh of…
|
1721 2 1
|
|
1721 13 8
|
I worry for the daffodils/
and there optimistic yellow bursts./
I worry for the over-eager clover,//
prodigious green on crepe myrtles,/
even for the early green of nut grass.
|
1721 5 3
|
Twenty-two tornadoes tore through Toronto, spiraling steel and stone to the streets where she stood, texting her best friend.
|
1721 10 4
|
"Nice one, sir," the toilet said.
|
1721 12 8
|
Trigger warning: casualties of war.
|
1721 13 6
|
|
1721 5 4
|
But I don't see the cabinets, or know how to put the 4 chapters he's talking about today into the drawers that are invisible, floating, above his bed he's been in for a year, me sitting next to him, becoming a spinster.
|