1453 6 6
|
I'll still want the blinds open
and the lights on,
to see the papier-mache of our flesh
fighting death away to the century mark,
even if you only want to live until
a ripe eighty-two.
|
145389
|
They can’t exterminate the poor just yet
|
145352
|
The manicured lawn rolls down either side of the knoll, punctuated with flat granite plaques, the occasional bouquet of cut flowers, a smattering of faded eight-inch American flags.
|
1453139
|
Those who don’t die, desire, descend. No song aloft arises from my irk. The seeing chieftain, not of sea, nor sand, nor boat, I till nightfall stammer alive, dig boneless trenches against tiding dregs and lathe, hunt, wallow, plow the hours, call in awei
|
145322
|
Happy Birthday to me.
It takes just a second on waking to remember,
It's June but it feels like December.
|
1453107
|
There were too many laws but not enough of the kinds she wanted. She wished for the right to go shopping. Then taste rather than disposable income or access to finance could distinguish people.
|
145384
|
Is this sought sea dream of the Arctic fox? The green below the circles of the white, above her eyes? On Formica tables where the woman smocks beneath glass borders of their vacant smiles, they pass by windows formulating styles,…
|
145254
|
The silver urn of ashes inscribed
with his unknown name.
|
145252
|
Don’t forget, I’ve watched the evil you’ve done to the lawn for years, not to mention the chaos you’ve made of the woodshed. Don’t you remember me showing you how to properly stack the wood?
|
145242
|
I left Iowa in august when the air was thick and sticky. I had been there three years minus a few days when the boy I'd been sleeping with packed almost everything I owned into my car and waved goodbye. In Baltimore I had few friends and a job teaching English at a…
|
145220
|
He had a lean build, except, remarkably, his midsection was perfectly barrel-like. As if he kept an alien lifeform in his belly, cultivated by years of Pabst and Yuengling transfusions.
|
145297
|
|
145253
|
In Aisle 3 would you brighthearted find Count the Chocula.
|
145211
|
"Soviet Mandelstam rose like Christ from the Nightmare,
Rises from the gulag, sunrise on the page."
|
145243
|
Ey’, it’s where I followed him down
|
1452159
|
They were discussing reincarnation,
what animals they would come back as.
"I'd be a vole," Cranshaw said. Is a vole
even an animal? Connie asked.
|
145266
|
The four Grannies say, “GO!” and leap from the window. King's pickup is below, and he has lined the bed with his mother's throw pillows. Sundresses fly. Blue plastic diapers billow. They want cigarettes. I light their smokes with King's pearl-handled lighter as…
|
145288
|
My stories are ramshackle; they lurch along in old sweaters with holes and missing buttons, drinking from mismatched cups and saucers.
|
145200
|
Holding a bouquet of flowers wrapped in a tissue in one hand, a round shape that balances the round yellow burst of light that is her dress. While the flesh of her chest bulges forward and she balances as though in a holding pattern in flight.
|
145264
|
"...she's been seeming like she's been dreaming while awake lately..."
|
145264
|
I'm an older guy. She is still quite young. I tell her I may be too old but she giggles and tells me that she did the research and it said because there is snow on the roof doesn't mean no fire's in the stove. She proved it. Things like this. We excite ourselves,…
|
145232
|
Artie Shaw gave Ava Gardner a reading list in preparation for their honeymoon that included The Brothers Karamazov, The Origin of the Species, Das Kapital and The Magic Mountain.
|
145251
|
Darkness was fast approaching. I stuck out my tongue at Naya, and she reached out as if to grab…
|
145221
|
"You don't need the gun," Dean said. "Bring me a bottle of peroxide and some duct tape."
|
145164
|
The sad march goes ever on. It stretches endlessly over an eternity of painful hills, as unnatural as lumps under the skin, into the deserted broken down streets, the forgotten unprotected alleyways, always adding more and more lost children to…
|
145166
|
The world has long since been bootlegged by madmen. The new invisible con men are the same as the old visible con men, hiding and lying behind their walls of lingering death. There's a weapon wielding demon hell bent on an insane vengeance crawling around…
|
145184
|
A man bows his head
and crosses his chest
before crossing the street
and the rain keeps falling
on his bare blue shirt
and on top of his head
The taxis will not stop
The light’s still red
as the man waits
for the sign of the hands
|
145177
|
|
145163
|
Day by day people went missing. Reports of the ads being answered with a robocall solution to their problems were at first unconfirmed. Yesterday my best friend told me his emotional distress call was going to be channeled into a free trip to what he call
|
145121
|
Sometimes when I fall I see a ...
|
