1700 8 5
|
The army was bulldozing grandmother's house.
|
170097
|
MOSAIC Your eyes coal-rimmed, busted, burned by betrayal. You and I, knee to knuckle, skinny with disorders and blurred around our edges. Challenged by our experience and the ash of past-love dusting the grate, the state, the…
|
170032
|
The night we broke into Bron-yr-Aur it was too cold to make love. I said I wasn't horny anyway. You put your hand on my forehead: Are you ill?
|
170001
|
She overcomes herself on the day of the spectacle, clown paint, unmoving amid a rumble of trains and screens, video logs and snapshots, live blogs from phones wet with lotion. This is Tokyo. Facial masks. Bare flaking paint in streams. Stardust.
|
1700179
|
Words darken with smut and irony over time.
|
169992
|
The bus heads west on Route 36, toward the next stop – Howell, New Jersey. After driving ten minutes, and after crossing the tracks, the bus gets a flat.
|
1699178
|
When I was young and self-born in religion my aunts, uninterested in being washed in the Blood of Christ, called me Preacher Boy. I didn't pay them any attention. It was fine by me, I said, if they wanted to sit around and paint their toenails . . .
|
1699103
|
Occasionally I will pick up a quarterly—
As a budding poet, to do what I oughterly,
And peruse the pages for helpful examples
That I can crib or use as samples.
|
169964
|
As black as his socks with a hole in them she used to sew while watching. The octopus has three hearts you know. Yes, No and Maybe.
As black as inkpots, inkjets, as black as typewriter ribbons and the Gutenberg press, as black as the ink of a trillion
|
169974
|
The Judge waited for the perfect wave.
|
169987
|
Cat fight. I rush outside and swinging my trusty broom I charge the rolling yowling ball of black fur.
|
169997
|
Even word dancers need rest.
|
169999
|
not every punishment proceeds / without a hitch
|
1699102
|
And I don't know how long it will be until she comes outside and figures it all out.
Figures me out.
|
169965
|
in the deep dark of
a 2 a.m. atmosphere
|
169922
|
|
169900
|
My gaze could have gutted any man. Any man, but John Marcy. History would write that John Marcy was a traitor to his country. Public enemy number one in the state of New York. When that probably couldn’t be farther from the truth.
|
169811
|
Background
foreground
life in the middle
|
169888
|
It is the first day of summer, a blue-green afternoon, and we sit beneath the English oak, Quercus robur. Everything has at least two names. It is the first day of summer, or the last day of something else.
|
169833
|
|
169876
|
—indistinct and foggy, my eyes lost at sea,
confined to a horizon not close to land.
|
169810
|
That night we went out to shoot some pool at the pool hall over on Durant Avenue, which was above a bar called Kip’s. Rotten Bobby walked in with his own damn pool cue, which came broken down in two pieces. He carried it in a narrow felt-lined carrying
|
169822
|
Why yes I began writing this, my bildungsroman, Who is Mitsy Jackson, in spring, 1974 or thereabouts, and thank you so much for asking.
|
169833
|
Tell me everything about yourself, if I could care, I can pretend, let me pretend.
|
1698106
|
Her smile dazzled me from across the room.
|
169876
|
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…
|
169820
|
The rocket shone in the distance. Cape Canaveral had never looked so pretty.
|
169853
|
She came to my house late that last night and shucked off her things and we slow-danced to Cruisin' as beaded rainwater slid off her black hair to the floor. She smiled an almost quizzical smile as she drank me there with her eyes, as if I was some…
|
169831
|
I went to a drum circle next night under the full moon in May, scotch broom and lilacs blooming. One does not inhale such aphrodisiacs without losing one’s balance. There were children of druids and pagans and stregas from lands over the sea, lands beyo
|
169821
|
The story itself is not much longer than a snippet. What is a snippet anyway?
|
