1591 1 2
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[SOME PEOPLE ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS.]
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159133
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The gate squeaked, the gravel shuffled and the letterbox clattered as February 14th's mail cascaded to the ground.
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159100
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One cold winter's day she met what she thought was the love of her life. He had everything going for him but his age. You see the sweet young thing was a lot younger than her. One might say that she had lived many lives before he had been born.
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159176
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All these poets with their wrinkled hands full of freshly poured over poems are driving me into the dried wheat fields like a black block of crows. Offering a collectable cigarette, they light the damned thing with another hand-rolled poem,…
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159152
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I am not covetous for catnip,
Nor care where I sleep at night.
It irks me not who takes my
Favorite chair, or swats me off a table.
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159153
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Either it was rescue--if the customer was alive to be found--or recovery, the term for bringing out the dead.
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159162
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Your usage of the English language / is awkward and passé—
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1591147
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Follow the money. It seeks/
the lowest of the low and finds them here/
in an embarrassing abundance.
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159131
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This was looking down from what we know as The Grassy Knoll.
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159132
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She turned him down again. Said it was her insomnia. She was so tired, she said, she had to work in the morning, and why couldn't he understand that? She rolled over facing away from him. He sat up in bed, thinking. When was the last time? Three months ago? Four? He…
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159143
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We came to the dump at dusk to shoot rats.
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159163
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Pringy practices an aesthetic variant of the “muscular Christianity” that is a tradition at Groton; a program of Sunday poetry classes for boys who violate the school’s ban on swearing.
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159111
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I like babies and little kids, more than some people but goddamn, children's laughter out of nowhere (in the night, when you're not expecting it) is creepy. I don't like slugs smeared like nightmare goo on my summer-bare feet, I could do without them in …
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159101
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At first we thought we could get by using honey so we all stormed the SuperMart and cleaned the shelves out of Suzie Bee Honey. First the jars and then the squeeze bottles, but it wasn't the same. Then Mary Sue yelled out “How about brown sugar?”…
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159100
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They followed the crow up a hill, where lights were at its brightest below. The teens stood frozen in time.
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159063
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When I arrived in heaven
Calling out your name
Running just on vapor
Leaving my old flames
I thought I saw you singing
Dripping from all sides
Crying like a rainbow
Reliving our old lives
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1590127
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She has dwindled for the better part of a year, staved off her period, breasts and hips like a warrior. Chestnut strands that danced along candy apple cheeks now surrender to metal pins, her bun severe as an old maid's. Her prominent ears…
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159032
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He nodded six times, and waged his stubby fingers repeatedly, forgetting she was simply two wags of the forefinger and a thin waif of girl came running over.
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159042
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Before I grew used to it
I would wake to the sound
of the Amtrak whistle
echoing down along the tracks
behind our trailer park
and wonder who was hurtling where
through the dark night and across
this wide Illinois prairie
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159045
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I lost a baby two years ago. At 8.5 weeks after seeing her heart beat. I haven't been able to talk about it, but I can write about it. My throat cracks and splinters when I begin to form a thought or word or phrase. I took such great care when…
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159051
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I lift up my sweatshirt and reach with a full fist into my belly button. This is where the fat comes out.
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159011
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Everybody knew the McDonald’s at the Waterfront was selling theraflu stamp bags, and I guess I’d heard how bad it was for you—they’d had reports of dumbasses ODing on channel 2, 4, and 11—but it was a lot stronger than regular heroin and a lot cheaper...
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159045
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Don’t break things, I add. And he looks at me like I’ve broken everything else.
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159043
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The first time I ever held a gun, I was three years old...
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159065
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You first hear about the wildfire on the old kitchen radio.
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159032
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Lama’s mother is dead. She died when Lama was just outgrowing her ballet tutus. When Lama talks about it, it is with the air of one who picks honeysuckle over jasmine. It gives sunshine, she says, to graves. Our epitaphs are so mechanical otherwise.
Un
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15901610
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Lavender, a Liberal Betty, batty from hormones, in a fanciful fit, named her daughter Lavender. Husband Don winced. Brothers Donald, John, Billy, and Tom were puzzled and pleased by this sister, this girl, who was a little bit like them, yet not like them at…
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159001
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The two of them stood at the long end of a pier that cut sharp into an L 25 feet out into the river. It was an old wooden pier that relished in its every crack and splinter regardless of the fresh coat of white paint that melted lazily over the rotting bo
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159053
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He can become anyone. If he wants. He'd rather not but it's not his choice.
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159055
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"Your loss," she cackled, stumbled to the bed in the corner, hummed a tuneless song, and began snoring, too.
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