2312 13 11
|
they’d been pumping him
with Dilaudid at night,
to adjust his palette for what was
coming, in the soft lamp light he
watched his long fingers sprout pink
caterpillar fuzz, knuckles morphed
into hinges for Monarch butterflies,
|
231184
|
I'm Icarus in Brueghel's painting. My wings as it turned out were made of wax. Mothers, tell your daughters this truth. You cannot fly so close to the sun.
|
2311119
|
Cherry was America's least favorite pie. Her mother made it every year for her father's birthday because "daddy doesn't like cake." America had to wash the bowls, the wooden spoon, the plates and finally the Pyrex dish. Her brother got to "contribute" by climbing the tree…
|
231175
|
The cat's on the floor fussing with the plastic bag from the liquor store. There are tiny scratches and bites on my hand. The TV is fully concerned with liquor-induced violence. "These people are thirsty." I'm the same, but my needs are met. Prohibition's over. …
|
231186
|
I was good-looking, marketable and ambitious. And that never hurt anyone cracking it big ...
|
2311207
|
Well, it’s a cold dance we dance this morning. You are up at the crack of dawn and the bed is empty even before you leave. I pretend to sleep so I can revel in the delicious morning ritual I know will be ending soon. I hear you brew coffee, shower, tal
|
23102312
|
Down cellar, my father showed me where he kept his beer stash. It was in a cubbyhole under the bulkhead, where Mom never thought to look.
|
23094822
|
When the snow reached the windowsills I was no longer a virgin.
|
230632
|
We are the generation who tattoo our stories on our bodies, who pierce what appears impenetrable; we fly our scars like pennants.
|
230588
|
They were a family, now, these three: child, widow, widower.
|
2305366
|
I do not trust Shay anymore.
|
23042325
|
You climb on a stool, drink off the first glass without coming up for air. Man, that tastes good!
|
23043720
|
Make cartography with your mouth...
|
230397
|
This little town lost its mill...
|
23032911
|
On the eve of celebrating their patron saint at the public house, one of his particularly cabbaged mates was bold enough to ask him about his cranial deformity.
|
23032013
|
I love to lie when discovered. "I'm your new neighbor." "The landlord sent me." "I'm the ghost of the girl who died on the 11th floor." "I fell from the sky." I wear billowing white dresses and a wide-brimmed straw hat that throws my face into shadow. Peo
|
230345
|
It’s true enough my status as honorary male has come in handy in my profession, but I never considered matters of the flesh. I feel a surge of warmth between my thighs as if a cock is dangling there, thick and florid. The sensation is oddly exciting.
|
23024324
|
The field opens up to us like something born.
|
2302115
|
Where was she exactly? There is, of course, no answer to this question. But that didn't stop me from asking it. Constantly. Obsessively.
|
230293
|
She's standing outside the 7-11, skirt up round her ass. Ripe. She could be a whore but she looks way too classy. Plus she has a huge soda - I'd guess diet - and a Twinkie.
|
230223
|
The reaction had started, the hives and respiratory swelling. Maddy huffed for air, each inhalation rattling her throat louder, more hoarse.
|
2302289
|
People huddle in their basements like kittens. People laugh, darkly, saying they'd rather be surfing. People wonder if their batteries are charged. People never do get what they want. People grow tired of the sad dog following them around. People want you to know how…
|
230100
|
Even though I made the phone call, it was really Steven who put me on that plane. I wanted to fly out at dawn. "Let's wait till after breakfast," he said. "Change to a later flight." By that time everything was sold out except a few seats on Doomed Flight…
|
2301176
|
The Boys The Boys, they call my brothers in the neighborhood, or Those Boys. The Taylor Boys. Sometimes, Mom calls them Thing One and Thing Two, like in The Cat in the Hat. Those bad boys. Nobody has brothers like my brothers, kicked off the school bus, barred…
|
23011611
|
Walking in to work from an unfamiliar direction, I saw her, on a street I had never been down before. I was coming from his place, for the first time, after the first time. The first time, but not the first date. That's not me. I'm not one to... not one who... He worked…
|
230074
|
For here in the vortex are no other laws, Than separate towards you I and skirting stone- To wards where wavelets purr against their pause A moment more, to yawn to omicron… Inside the seashell orchard's whirl-quick floor- Come all at once to me or…
|
230054
|
my exposed
flu-ridden head
|
23003513
|
She walks through the house she’d bought. The filth and the stench of mould nearly make her retch. Dead fleas line the windowsills, the dressers, the floors.
|
23002313
|
|
2300149
|
... a moth,
a kiss. A silence.
|
