1448 16 9
|
The blood is memorable/
as is the copper taste of that/
momentary certainty of lockjaw.
|
144841
|
Zusman snored on the sofa as Motel gathered his belongings in the dark. He moved quietly as had become his custom in the mornings. Initially he had tried not to wake his nephew on his way to work in the…
|
144876
|
Here the three o'clock sun is an old patched up fellow, with a stained yellow beard, walking in a small crispy rain of brown leaves, looking at something that requires a bit of squinting no one else can see, on the far side of the softening…
|
1448109
|
I offer you a peanut butter sandwich full of unconditional love
and you say I'm being controlling, so I let you eat cake, eat cake.
|
144864
|
I woke up to the humming
of an empty space in the shape of a sweatshirt,
|
14481511
|
When Lois finally found him down there, Johnny was wedged between a large rock and the trunk of an old, long since fallen, cottonwood tree. She said as she got to him, she heard his gurgling breath, fighting fiercely to stay alive. When she saw the deep, gathering, red…
|
144831
|
The trouble with alarm clocks is naturally that they are miserable. And their curse is that their misery is useful: we employ them because we want to get away from them. But we would never have one as a friend.
|
1448126
|
|
144786
|
Our painter man was killed by a bunch of snotty kids who were making fun of him. A gun went off. What is a noodle to do? He wasn't sitting alone in his world, anymore. Where was his famous straw hat? His trusty pipe? He desperately needed to smoke…
|
144743
|
Her son was doubtless the biggest wanksta that ever went to Andrew Jackson in the whole crumby history of the school.
|
144752
|
Once there was a man who wrote in code. He was comfortable among substitutions
|
144710
|
The doctors said, when she was born, that the gills would eventually fade away on their own. Nothing to fear, they said; no more unusual than the rare child born with a tail, or a dense pelt of fur, or a single sharp tooth jutting from its new pink gums.
|
144710
|
Smiling, holding hands, Joe and Lara basked in the sunshine of the mid January day as they approached the diner. The temperature was warm enough for golf. Joe had played in far colder weather in spring and fall.
|
1447107
|
You stretch my heart / in sacred ways
|
144720
|
Meanwhile stars continue to surprise...
|
144731
|
My beloved lets me crawl into bed
and put my feet on him
since his skin is
warm and hot like a fire roaring from within
his soft flesh.
|
144722
|
Or, do my own red flags counter balance his. My back and forth, my restlessness, my one foot out the door, my ‘once a leaver… always a leaver’, my pitter patter for a former flame... peppered with my transgressions, my mistakes. Or, worse, the way I have
|
144767
|
I love you because your eyes are both crossed
When you do it, because you’re focused
On the inside of the universe
I love you because
You’re on a roller coaster
Through life
And I can ride along
For the thrill of it
I love you because
|
144711
|
He roared back at her, shaking his empty gun in his right hand, waving his left hand in the air. “I am George Burnett, esquire, late of Balliol College, Oxford! I am a hunter, a killer of pigs! I do not fear you, bear; take the pig and be content!”
|
144700
|
Fat Patty sniffs the delicate waft of peat and sidles over, proffering a grope in exchange for a few wet-lipped swigs. Hell yes.
|
1447128
|
We suffer//
the one agony only- of having no longer/
any physical effect nor way to speak/
of what we watch to those we watch.
|
144755
|
There’s someone in the audience who is immolating himself
Cutting his own leg over and over with a pen knife
And groaning: “Oh God, oh God”
And all I can think from up at the podium is
This guy must absolutely hate these poems
I am reading
|
1447116
|
fanned lashes on rouged cheek
a glamorous sea creature
in violet perfume
|
144733
|
two pairs of arms and legs
|
144721
|
Smiling at stones and chunks of earth pounding in...
|
144753
|
Before the railroad tracks are blown off by the wind, the wall tiles morph to trace 34th Streetwhile a silver balloon emerges from the end of the tunnel. A child’s hand reaches out for the gleam and she, the woman in a black-dress with a mandarin collar,
|
1447146
|
|
144732
|
...the relatives didn't seem nearly as fucked up as she thought they would be considering...
|
144722
|
“The window is a much better place to read,” she said.I wasn't aware she was talking to me, at first. In my typical manner, I was thinking about far off possibilities and realities completely detached from my own. Yet, here she was, a far off…
|
144711
|
I still picture her waving her bare arms and hands into the purple bellied clouds above the trees, her crooked smile, the spiraling silver maple seeds cascading soft circles around her determined reach, as though the very tree limbs shaping the sky above
|
