1547 9 10
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When the dark shadows of his limp eyes told us life was slowly seeping away, stolen by his stroke, his wife signed the “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” order and, tearfully leaving the room, she turns, asking a final question, “Think a needy family could use his…
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154743
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When I met Gregor Samsa he was still a cockroach, erratic and skittish whenever the light came on. We often spoke in the dark. I empathized with the man. I mean bug. Ok. That isn't fair. You can't call a man a bug because he chirps and eats dried skin cells. A…
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154740
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Then it started extruding tendrils and tying them all into intricate knots.
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154744
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Jenny was certain nobody saw her when she took the slinky shirt from her father's store. It was blue with buttons shaped like cherries, the fabric light as air. She balled it up in her hand. Her father owned a chain of boutiques called Body Electric. The racks were…
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154711
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A mundane endeavor depicted as a quest. Try it, you'll like it!
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1547125
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Monday will come soon enough to get/
what needs to be done, done.
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154700
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The young man pulls out his wallet, grabs a couple of bills and stops short of handing them to the bedraggled man. “So how do I know you’re not going to go out and buy some crack with this money?”
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15471817
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The courts had scheduled the date long ago but the time, an hour always left to the warden, had yet to be decided.
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1547169
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The blood is memorable/
as is the copper taste of that/
momentary certainty of lockjaw.
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154721
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I remember sitting there on the first unfinished rooftop, watching you building houses out of words. You hammered in grammar and punctuation; you said these things needed to be hammered in by hand. You drove the long straight exclamation …
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15471816
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Gossip Betty Martini divorces husbands when they least expect it. On a seeming whim, she pays a visit to dear Arnold, who keeps her papers handy in his top desk drawer. She initials here and there, signs with a…
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1547109
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...clash of gulls
wend upwards, disappearing into grey
night's high tide recedes
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154777
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Harvey C. Hamby was drunk. Usually he held his liquor well, but tonight he was off his form. Stumbling over an ottoman, he landed on the floor in a sodden sprawl. As he fell, his left foot shot out behind him and socked Glenda Steinberg in…
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154732
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#2 The Typewriter Inside You by Harmon Gentle—I found this one at a garage sale when I was 15. Intended as a manual for sharpening one's typing skills, by the third chapter it became obvious that Mr. Gentle's sanity had slipped, and that rather than mastering the…
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154741
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That is the question,
not to be or not to be
Life, death, whether to be,
all that is superfluous
in the face of laughter
and how to achieve it
under extraordinary circumstances
like not drinking anymore
I’m afraid not all the alcoh
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154731
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Sheep are very philosophical, I hear. Stop this hopeless dreaming.
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15461011
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I fall in love with a second cousin at the picnic. I make sure I sit next to her.
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154621
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154630
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Connor didn't bother to wait in the line of busy professionals, opting to cut in front of the sign that announced "Line Forms At Other End."
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154633
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The shit just doesn't want to come off.
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154611
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I took advantage of a free period this afternoon to nap. When I awoke, I tasted blood. My tongue was swollen. I checked myself in the mirror and saw twin punctures on my lower lip with pinpricks of blood on each. I winked at my reflection and lifted my li
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154600
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She wheeled more deeply into the office towards Mason’s desk. Keith hurried to the desk and pulled the chair out of the way for her and a sat down next to her. She was blue-eyed, pale and completely hairless, which made it difficult to guess her age.
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154674
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154666
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With their brightly-colored bits of
found string
woven into the walls of their nests
to teach their baby birds
what the worms of the future
will look like.
Somewhat like the
cave paintings of Lascaux
for early man in France,
when hunti
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154654
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this is where we end --
the exorbitant eye of forgotten days.
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154652
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—Now that’s a hell-of-a-painting, Frank, he said. Those colors are engaged in warfare. How the hell did you do that?
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154686
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I wrote her a poem.She said, “I hate poetry.” I said, “OK, just read the words then."
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154600
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“She’s very sick. She’s dying,” and he smoothed my hair along my neck.
“It’s leukemia. A very rare type,” his hand reached my shoulder and stopped there.
“She only has a few months.”
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154644
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I slide my CD toward Eric Burdon who sits, smiling and gracious and fatigued from Seattle traffic, at the table at Silver Platters, where I have just purchased ‘Til Your River Runs Dry, and stood in a line of old gray heads to have him sign it. I remove my hat and…
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1546108
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He knows I talk to angels, what he would call angels. I don’t talk to him.
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