1512 4 4
|
He keeps saying it,
babbles the term like he knows what it means
and we wince and interject with mama,
mama,
mama,
|
151252
|
“You done done sumpin’,” the old man guessed, “Sumpin’ bad...”
|
151262
|
“He put his stuff down—sunglasses, lotion and so forth—and I noticed there’s a little notebook that he didn’t have before.‘What’s that?’” I asked, and he said ‘Nothing.’”
|
151276
|
In the blacklight of the storm, mother would tremble, spit and sway as the shutters would clatter and she would give away her balance. It was more than my heart could bear. She would always center her accusation with, “your boyfriend is a rake and a flam.” That…
|
151254
|
I said, “That bird is hungry.”
The sparrow was eying both of us
At our separate outside café tables
As it hopped around looking for crumbs.
Then it would look up at us
Expectantly.
|
1512118
|
None of this is real, he says, and the path slopes down to a house that is possibly haunted. One always looks in such windows, one cannot not look at the predictable detritus of another's failure, a queer satisfaction, a fairy's dust. But no, not real, none of it. And…
|
151211
|
The highway stretches out in front of me, a black ribbon winding into the future; a collapsing probability of possibility connecting me with the past and through it to the future.
|
151221
|
He repeated these six words like a prayer. His only confession.
|
151231
|
"On the podium at Pride, he owned that he'd loved taking his children to playgroup as he got to ogle all the breast-feeding mothers. "
|
151261
|
I was quite alone in this small room with the tarp and the dying fire.
|
151200
|
You’re never really asleep. I am never awake. But as the darkness fades, I read. Your body tells my story.
|
151234
|
Carl’s peculiarity of toilet paper rolls is not covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act – he’s looked it up.
|
151100
|
And it's a tough thing
to become a father,
a contradiction;
guiding a child to avoid the things
that you know about so well.
|
151196
|
|
151155
|
beat them with fists and purses.
|
151186
|
remembering Cahokia, a place we rent near the water's edge, for we dare not enter
|
1511137
|
I miss Mother gentling the small of my back. She has forgotten me. Her little girl. Whose thumb she fussed over when a rose thorn scratched it and blood spilled like a secret. Whose smile she said was her morning sunshine, whose hug was incense. I yearn for her lips…
|
1511278
|
She asked if I needed to be measured for size “to make sure they feel really good on you,” her lips all gloss and smile. I was nineteen and knew my size but changes in weight had caused fluctuations before so maybe I'd be different…
|
1511105
|
Walter met Danial at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They didn't have much in common at first, other than AA, with Walter on the recovery side of treatment and Danial reluctantly just beginning.
|
151187
|
Cat fight. I rush outside and swinging my trusty broom I charge the rolling yowling ball of black fur.
|
15111010
|
|
151154
|
|
15111410
|
In those years,
you and I were told to leap
for a world suffused with sound
and industry.
|
151177
|
They blew in the doorway of the café at the French Hotel like two sparrows chasing each other. Their wings down in the dust, unheeding any danger in their hunger for each other. I knew the man who was about to become her husband, so maybe this was her las
|
1511168
|
But his muscles fluttered and off he flew
leaving the stink of barnyard on the sheets.
|
151065
|
I reach into my pocket for my keys and discover the cough drops Iput there a week ago have melted. Now my fingers are sticky. And I don’t have my keys.
|
151053
|
We sat in silence, the entire train, the few other passengers in anxious wait to see if I would change my mind. We all flipped pages, glanced up at each other, looked away when noticed.
|
151000
|
Sitting in the upper last row of Wyatt Hall, Matt stretched his long legs under the fold-up desk top. He looked down past his fellow students' heads to barely catch something Dr. Mock had said. . . .
|
151081
|
The thing Bentley remembered most about her was she had no body odor. None.
|
151064
|
Everybody needs a flaw or two. It builds character.
|
