1563 4 4
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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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156311
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When flash and bang merge you are, according to the manual, in deep do-do.
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156354
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this is where we end --
the exorbitant eye of forgotten days.
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156333
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two pairs of arms and legs
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156333
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156384
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He spotted her in Sarasota Whole Foods surveying the artichokes
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156386
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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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156300
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She can still be normal, says Momma, knowing my sister can’t hear, forgetting I can.
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156340
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We all stared, somewhat shocked and mostly disgusted.
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15621011
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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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156200
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Slipping into the Sydney Harbour Tunnel like a nocturnal creature fleeing the light, tears stream down my cheeks, spilling from my lips, the pain too great to care about self-preservation. Drunk still, hands clenched, I strain to focus on the world fading into a blur of…
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156200
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He woke up four hours later in his car in his garage with the worst headache of his life. He lurched out of the car and kicked over a basket of basil as he toddled towards the door to the house. He stopped and scooped the spilled basil back into the baske
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1562910
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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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156243
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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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156221
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I think we could be twins, our hands hitching us together like paper dolls, our parkas making blobby round balloon shapes as outlines for our bodies. I imagine each of us holding onto someone else, and the line continuing on from there until we have a cha
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156221
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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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156297
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Jeanne and I were married for eight years. I never knew her.
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1562134
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So I've got this head in a jar and I'm not sure who it belongs to.
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156288
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the brain plays impish tricks/
and entertains itself with avant garde/
home movies
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15621711
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...when they entered eager lungs hungry from deep and sweaty love
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156287
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...coming into that bone yard, you just hang a right, go on past La Fontaine, and take a left a bit further on. Jimbo's right up in there.
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156273
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Ginny, the mother, was a lark in every respect of the word. Born and raised in central California farm country, to a family of lower middle class means, educated in public schools in whose bathroom stalls she was deflowered as unceremoniously as a pig ta
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1562119
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A cheap pocket knife was the only sharp I carried in my backpack and they allowed me that. The man with the pot tattoo on his neck said, “All of us here needs some type of knife. You gotta cut up your food. We don't…
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156298
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Regret takes the shape of little clouds ...
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156244
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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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156232
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The voice on the other end mumbles, not forming words, but I understand: I am to be the starting third baseman for the Detroit Tigers.
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156111
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Behold! Passion fruit!Aureolin sun condensedRolls off palm and tongue.Spurn taut rounded skinWait for wrinklesRipeness revealed, resplendent —The pinnacle of worth.
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156142
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Anatoly Gringovitch took a swallow of beer, thoughtfully put the cap on his Ferrari da Varese custom fountain pen, and launched into his story:
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156111
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Summer bakes the metal playground slide to ripples. Still, kids line up. Sadists, all of them. Lucky enough to choose pain. Max feels it every breath, unwanted.
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156111
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I dream about the boy in The Neverending Story, the gate of mirrors, and the Nothing, a dark cloud that floats in the sky, takes away everything.
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