1668 8 8
|
“I won't live here,” Beth said, waving her hand to indicate the small Southern town in which they were having dinner—the most delicious fried chicken either of them had ever tasted—in a restaurant located in an antebellum mansion. She looked…
|
166745
|
Paulette lived on the east side on Paulette Avenue. Mama dropped me off when we wanted to play Barbies. Her neighborhood was a little green lily pad in a swamp of blight and disrepair. A ghetto moat ringed around those three fancy blocks like a first line of defense,…
|
166700
|
“Would you look at that one!” my father said.
“Who did she know?” my mother asked.
“Who did she blow?” my father said loudly, and burst out laughing. I laughed too, although I didn't know why.
My mother shot him one
|
166753
|
All I wanted to know was: Am I coming close? You could have given me a clue. How was I to know how deep the scar ran? I always thought scars were superficial, but I was young, and willing – what did I know?
What would they have done if they had come
|
166786
|
remembering Cahokia, a place we rent near the water's edge, for we dare not enter
|
166784
|
(the vast preponderance of dark matter and dark energy discernible in these latter days begins to suggest just how dark the humor of existence is) . . .
|
166722
|
Past the pavilion, past the factory, past the underside of the bridge where the surfers jimmy their sloppy fingers over the oil barrels.
|
166745
|
The last time Cyrus rode in a train’s passenger car, he came home a dead man.
|
1667198
|
A proper study of human history should
lead the student to an inescapable desire
to commit suicide
|
166780
|
|
1667136
|
|
166655
|
I guess you’re gone now
That’s okay
I guess I can live with my own ghosts
I had no idea
What it meant
But now I do
It meant I was standing
At the end of everything
And did not know it
|
166662
|
Eddie meets Sarah Packard, a “college girl” played by Piper Laurie. She walks with a limp, a fact Eddie doesn’t notice at first because she’s sitting down at a diner table in a bus station. She’s alcoholic and writes poetry.
|
166697
|
awfully evil decisions upstairs in your head that could come back to haunt you in your later years;I'm here to report your zooming about hair isn't really one of them. You have found the infernal wheel works in all four directions at once. Good for you.…
|
1666116
|
A pinprick breaks the black/
and pins the spin of constellations/
around its still point.
|
166600
|
"You've fallen out of love with me, is that it? That you'll leave me for another girl, who has bigger boobs and fucks you better than I do."
|
166600
|
...the fatal bleeding-out of the love receptors. They call it “Juliet's Tears.”
|
166621
|
She picked the fish out of the box leaving a pool of mucus and blood slowly congealing on the shelf and dripped it toward the kitchen table. Outside the wind lashed the tops of the poplar trees together and rain sprayed from the barn roof opposite.
|
166664
|
"...innocent butterflies of pollution
trapped and entangled,"
|
166666
|
some days are
minotaur shit on your tongue/
smokestacks dumping acid rain on your already thinning hair
your eyelashes pinned in upside down, backward/you give wrong shaving directions to the mirror
|
166600
|
"One-upmanship" is a strategy for defeating an opponent somewhat unfairly without actually cheating.
|
1666138
|
She bought a dog with short legs to make her own legs look longer.
|
16662012
|
The eyes, luminous and large-
each an infinite bright blue ocean
Wind ruffles feathers
My ego and vanity also/
encourage me not to wear a mask.
An aberration/
that general circumstances/
will remedy, and soon.
|
166561
|
You look at people
and despise them all.
|
16651010
|
As if to ask if I'm okay, as if to ask aren't we the same two on this wet December morning as ever, as yesterday, a month ago even, she shoots me a look as I stand by the bed, then her sane mild brown eyes…
|
1665126
|
"Every generation is a new generation, isn't it? What's so different about your generation?"
|
166553
|
She worked the research desk. Like most ladies before computers and cell-phones she lead a quiet conservative life. She wore dresses, spent time with family and friends...Emma also had been stricken as a child
|
166532
|
|
166511
|
After years of unsustainable binge spending and a global economic semi-meltdown, most people have had to cut back on their expenses. Many folks are struggling to make do in this new and bewildering economy and we are all learning to live on our means, rather than beyond…
|
166532
|
“Hi. I’m Rita Bates,” I had said. “Can I sit here?
The boy who introduced himself as Thomas told me I could, so I did, and his friends all introduced themselves in turn. Around the table there was Bev, Ernest, someone whose name started with an F – maybe
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