1590 15 8
|
Susan said since her divorce three years ago there have been too many Jacks in her life. Seven, if she counted that older guy. She knew that now. Too many. It was the name and little else that drew her to men. She told me the name alone was like Pavlov's bell. It…
|
159077
|
Content may contain ordinary, everyday, and all around average happenings.
|
159000
|
That old woman's got to be senile or something. The other day she asked my daughter if I had a "thing about water." Sharon told her I didn't, but then came right in and asked me, "Mother, you got a thing about water?"
|
159064
|
Everybody needs a flaw or two. It builds character.
|
159031
|
"I have a prehensile tongue," he said matter-of-factly. "I know how to make you feel good." Such confidence, I say. Prove it.We're sitting on the couch, watching a movie, but not paying attention to it. We sit side-by-side, my leaning into him, and his arm is around me,…
|
159087
|
Cat fight. I rush outside and swinging my trusty broom I charge the rolling yowling ball of black fur.
|
159097
|
Even word dancers need rest.
|
159011
|
|
159021
|
My buddy had been in the computer business, a systems analyst. Surely there would be some mention of him online. But there was nothing. Nothing, that is, until I saw the obituary.
|
159040
|
A short triangular plastic shovels into the/White plastic container filled with topaz crystal-like/Salt granulars. Scratchy sandy sounds echo.
|
159021
|
Last night Jim taught me how to catch forks. Meaning, he taught me how to throw them. But he called it catching forks. It was late, and we were low down 3rd street, south of the Bay Bridge, the baseball stadium, all the people and cars, on top of a warehouse. There were a…
|
159000
|
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.
|
158922
|
Mo Dean woke up sober.
And tired.
Tired of life, of soiled pants, rash, vomit, and whiskey sweat. Tired of holes in his pockets and blisters on his feet, of hanging signs asking for dimes and getting only pennies. And most of all, tired of the police.
|
158982
|
Marge bought the rug on-line.
|
158987
|
The first thing I saw was a sandal, but it didn't exactly look priestly. It was golden and glowing, and the foot it was strapped to had red painted nails. The straps wrapped around her ankles, and up her slender leg, tied off in a bow below the knee.
|
158900
|
A woman is fishing in the Seine at the far left
of the painting, while time is suspended and light
remains. One man plays a trumpet. A half dozen
people sit or walk under parasols. Couples stroll
and children run or sit or stand beside their
p
|
158931
|
Fat robins are chirping –
loudly – at 4 a.m.
They’re trying to delude
the worms into thinking it’s
dawn already
The worms get up underground
They’re grumpy, they
bump into things
They come up to the surface
and Wham! That
|
1589104
|
I hold them to the light...
|
158964
|
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
|
158910
|
This must never get out in the press, for it would cause widespread panic. The priests would surround my house, not to mention the police and possibly the army. Castor Desayuno has come back from the dead!
|
158941
|
We cannot love the past...
|
158954
|
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.
|
1589107
|
For you have waited. And waited and waited. And soon your slice of bread will be ready.
|
158800
|
I catch a glimpse of myself in the small mirror on the adjacent wall and find myself becoming shy at my own reflection, which is ludicrous in theory, shying away from oneself, but as I lock onto the few freckles I have spread neatly on both cheeks...
|
158821
|
The next week, she sends a small white box in the mail / with tissue paper, a ceramic mold the color of bleached bone—
|
158822
|
Why yes I began writing this, my bildungsroman, Who is Mitsy Jackson, in spring, 1974 or thereabouts, and thank you so much for asking.
|
158865
|
This writers' conference (sponsored by VQR, which had run its banner ad atop the Fictionaut home page in the summer of 2014, which begins to explain both my attendance and this essay) revealed itself as an apt subject . . .
|
158886
|
Mrs. L. was sitting on a love seat in her nightgown. She was sitting in a man’s lap....
|
158871
|
Emma Louise is walking over a concrete bridge when she spies, out of the corner of her eye, a man fishing, waist deep, in the river tumbling below. She is thinking that the water must be very cold on this autumn day, when she sees an extraordinary thing.
|
1588133
|
—It’s difficult to say, he said. I have mood swings. Women don’t like that. They become upset.
|
