2137 9 9
|
One morning, she used a few prim phrases to break up with me. She had her suitcases packed by lunch. She was gone by dinner. Two weeks later, she emailed me a picture of herself sitting on a small brown couch.
|
2137228
|
"...when my daddy found out about Jasper, it was too late— mama was already round-&-radiant with Jasper's child. "
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21372217
|
I stare, out a dirty window, / into the sanitary blackness.
|
213753
|
It came from the animal shelter, seizing and shivering, with eyes almost bigger than its head. Eyes that followed Pearl like it couldn’t stuff the whole picture of her in its tiny skull.
|
2136227
|
The first thing she remembers is sunshine, then her own dawning, and feeling the lumps on her head and bruises on her face and pain in her heart and aloness of her soul.
|
213443
|
The rapist was caught on December 23rd, the day before Christmas
Eve. Everyone in town was surprised to learn he had a wife and two children; a son and a daughter, the same age, and a yellow Labrador retriever.
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213232
|
Things have happened.
It’s a given. What, are you crazy? Of course things have happened. It’s the world, for Christ’s sake. Things are happening. I am consistently missing most, if not all, of them.
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2132306
|
Professor William Purcell, dean of the university's shrinking drama department. Fifty, tall and thin, always well dressed . . .
|
213052
|
Rowan’s arm burned and throbbed like the center of a neutron star as it went critical for minutes turned inside-out like hours. Standing in a wall, then huddled underneath the couch, she danced around the rim of consciousness, ripping at the seams of her
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21291713
|
We were to eat just meat and to become discombobulated over vegetables and bread and not to indulge in sex with strange men—men were all strange once you got used to their distance—were Lincoln logs, poles, boulders and scrub trees.
|
21291511
|
The sky was an over-bleached sheet, stretched to the point of ripping. Everything worn but clean. He was saying he'd be happier if we lived in Canada. The sun seemed very close, like a star at the top of a Christmas tree. Maybe I could pull it down. Our baby had…
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21271712
|
The sea dies where a cello torques on sand, leaving me without its compass. An old clock sings.
|
21271213
|
Tomorrow the authority smashes. Tonight we march, splash, carve letters in wet paint from room to room until steel blades bend. The letters will tilt in shadows gliding over the walls to mask our tales born of fractured wrists and the ghosts, our keepers.
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21262524
|
I see his look, his impatient look.
|
21262014
|
The ethnographer turns on a recorder. The story began before but that is lost, like it never happened.
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21262317
|
I watch my mother
No longer beautiful or charming
Her left arm shaking
Her mind a gone thing no longer doing her wrong
Wandering away from me in the mall
To kiss the hands of strangers...
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21263714
|
I should have created a first-date questionnaire heartaches ago.
|
2126105
|
I hold a key to feel its pull, and follow where it leads. Once, because the moment, key, and direction felt so right, I ended up on the streets naked. A police officer threatened me with handcuffs. I laughed, mesmerized by the cuff's clink, their never-ending circles,…
|
21261914
|
I’m in the Grand Central Station bar-- the one at the top of the stairs-- waiting for my husband to enter so I can watch him. The bar is crowded, everyone getting in that last beer before heading back to whiney children and tired spouses.
|
21252310
|
'Hey, are you supposed to be from a cartoon or something?' said the Grim Reaper. I had to take a big drink before I could reply. I didn't know what to say, so I said 'Could I see your watch, please?' He looked down my dress while he thought about it.
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21244421
|
He watches his paralyzed left arm arc across his body, then swivel around and disappear behind his back. He does this over and over again. He's very high and it makes him laugh.
|
2124106
|
If all the world had one neck, I would have clenched my hands around it and squeezed until everything went black.
|
212427
|
which consisted of me being shoved down a flight of stairs. Thanks to a PELL grant in 1996, I was triumphantly run-over by a family Winnebago in the critically acclaimed, Run-Over. This lead to a series of “happenings” I conducted in alternative space
|
2121154
|
There’s things you can change in this world and things you can’t. We have to figure out which is which. Though I never was much good at it, I guess.
|
21202113
|
“What sort of truck was it in Texas?” Carlisle says.
“Small as truck goes,” Mill says. “Smaller than a full-size pick-up.”
|
21191717
|
Andreas Cappelanus taught that the word / “love” comes from the word meaning / “to fish.”
|
21192417
|
|
211833
|
I would roll my eyes, give one word replies or a smiley face.
|
21182219
|
You’re broken. Your eyes don’t see quite right, and your hands don’t feel quick enough. I love you anyway.
|
21171813
|
Donnie remembers just in time. So we run practically every stop sign and red light in town, and get there just before they close.
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