1511 3 3
|
I know who done it. Them goddamn taters. I walked around the yard and started picking up pieces of the camaro, wondering if, from above, they’d laid the parts out into some kinda cult symbols or something.
|
1511 4 2
|
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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1511 4 2
|
Floating in liquor only to drown the next morning.
|
1511 2 0
|
There is no life here, only a bleak slab of frozen desert and a sorrowful wind that calls for me to venture out.
|
1511 2 0
|
I woke up pissed off—like that feeling you get when you take a long nap in the afternoon. Except instead of being on a couch or a bed, I was trapped in a mashed-up Honda on I-75.
|
1511 16 13
|
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1511 8 3
|
First of all, there was no snow. I seem to remember that. And there was no Christmas tree in the house.
|
1511 6 1
|
Once was when we were in Vegas on layover from L.A., I told her I thought we should go to the Elvis Chapel and get remarried.
|
1511 10 5
|
She looks for the obit, can't find. Over and over, looks. Nothing. Nothing except something touching her shoulder. Follow me. Corridors, doors, along and along, no time to notice that this last is the stage door — she was so suddenly there in the blare and…
|
1511 4 2
|
He arrived at Bellevue hospital in a straight jacket bound to a gurney.
|
1511 5 2
|
Your stepsisters send their love. All three are still on the wagon.
|
1511 6 4
|
The mind sparkles with Shakespeare. It's like hearing the rain fall. The world becomes silent and dark and the rain becomes snow and falls like snow and rests on the ground like snow and informs the mind with the values of heaven. A distant oboe pins its sympathies…
|
1511 11 10
|
Almost every weekend I'd ask Henry to go out with me and Marge, telling him we could double and, hey, maybe he could bring Ellen, who he dated a while back, who still asked about him. I'd suggest such things as going to a movie or out for a few drinks to reminisce about our…
|
1511 2 1
|
I'll strip off the skin down to the begin again.
|
1511 2 1
|
If there was a single constant in the boy’s life, it was that he had always thrown knives. In his youth he had thrown them only in his mind . . .
|
1511 0 0
|
They followed the crow up a hill, where lights were at its brightest below. The teens stood frozen in time.
|
1511 3 3
|
I immediately felt anxious guilt, being the one responsible for opening the way for infection.
|
1510 17 9
|
A young girl wavering between celibacy and punk mother-lust despair came to visit us each night
|
1510 0 0
|
Tent City has gone quiet. There is a deadline. I heard it on the news. I’ve never thought about the word before. How in this place it means what it means.
|
1510 5 3
|
The bar was dark and a little dirty, and that suited Splinker's mood just fine.
|
1510 8 10
|
Life is not always quixotic.
|
1510 2 1
|
His voice isn't familiar but his words are. He says he knows we haven't spoken in years and apologizes for it. I can hear him pacing on the other end of the line, tapping things and then a shriek of glass shattering. Really, I tell him, no need to…
|
1510 4 0
|
Over the years, Morgana had grown. She was so much more than what Xavier remembered. So much different. She had an astute, almost shrewd air about her. She didn't seem nearly as fragile as he had left her. No, she had an eye out for herself now.…
|
1510 1 1
|
"Yes. It was moving, and not along the ground, either. We were. . . looking toward the cemetery, and the ghost or whatever was clearly visible. . ."
|
1510 7 5
|
And right there beside me
That single wobbling
Snail-like trail of my heavy
French Horn case
|
1510 8 8
|
I caught her a-feasting with her eyes and smilin' at that Jesus- haired Waffle House cook, Dennis Roy, again and I said, “Merlene, my tiny kitty-kat, they's no reason to carry no torch for him ‘cause he may not be with us very long ‘cause, if you notice, they's no…
|
1510 3 0
|
It's cheap beer, but cold
you welcome that rushing hiss and the following
long drink of chilly wetness washing away
the parched, dust dry, cotton mouth
of grave-digging in the desert sun
|
1510 8 6
|
The drop is like a hangman's drop, an executioner's, but farther and longer, perhaps three or four seconds.
|
1510 7 6
|
Now, this boy removed his socks in front of me, on the chair beside my desk where I read my books, and said: “My toenails aren’t shaped properly.”
|
1510 9 7
|
Weight of faithlessness...
Mist
Of bodily
Existence
Grave expectations for the future
|