2291 8 6
|
It was my grandmother's idea of a joke, but I never realized she was joking when she repeated it every Thanksgiving. She would sit at the head table just before Uncle Leon would carve the bird and ask, "It's an American holiday. Shouldn't we be roasting an eagle…
|
2290229
|
You don't make money worrying about other people's feelings. I learned that from my father at an early age. He managed rental properties, which I, his daughter, now own. He wanted a son, so I became one.
|
229072
|
Sylvia Plath killed herself while her children slept upstairs, breakfast ready at their doors. Anne Sexton wanted to do it, but Sylvia got there first, making Anne just a little less remarkable, although she tried often enough, her death like a song put on repeat. …
|
22891212
|
r luv iz gud enuf 4 a tat2
|
228966
|
He didn’t used to smell that way, like a rained-on boot, like the insides of a lived-on couch. ... He used to smell like he wore light, subcutaneous cologne.
|
228874
|
Teddy laughs like a machine gun. People back away when they hear him. Every time I see him at work, I try to make his skinny body rattle. I would never back away.
|
228853
|
For the woman with no arms, life is a constant dexterity demonstration
|
22871410
|
I can never tell if he’s drunk or using some sort of substance or if perhaps his brain just doesn’t fire at the pace that we have come to accept as normal.
|
228797
|
Every night famous authors read not only to us, but to a duck. A wild female who emerged from the lake just as we were gathering, settled her gray-brown feathers down not three feet from the podium, tucked her head inside her wing, and remained there. If the duck liked…
|
22872620
|
He boarded the wrong plane. (Hey, it could happen. Maybe not after 9/11, but certainly before)
|
228782
|
"Michael has had no drink, no cigarette, no illicit drug and very little illicit sex since September 14, 1989."
|
228653
|
So she leans over the patio table like that model in that magazine ad and then takes a sip of her blended coffee drink as if a director had said to pretend the straw is a penis. As if this director only just shouted, “And you're a dirty, dirty girl, and
|
228656
|
Being a grandparent is most joyous when deliberately subversive.
|
228588
|
Lucky bastard, he gets Glamour Puss and I get lady wrestler who's giving off the vibe she'll bludgeon me to death with her Bible if I make one false move.
|
22852824
|
The locals cut stone in quarries, built elevators at the Cummins plant in Columbus, or brewed shine back in the hills between Bean Blossom and Gnaw Bone.
|
2285119
|
Traveling with a live chicken on a city bus is an experience I hope never to repeat.
|
2285143
|
Tyler has a Mars bar in his jeans pocket. It’s warm and soft. He tries to insert it.
|
2284128
|
I write in the morning when the world is bendy.
|
228463
|
“Hello, this is Natalie Silverman, I’ve been tying to get my prescription filled for over a week. ... Maybe you recall, you did my brain surgery last spring? I’m sorry that there’s still a balance of over eight thousand dollars. I hope you don’t hold tha
|
228473
|
Smoke is pouring outta my ears! (And outta my mouth and nostrils, but that's normal.) The Fast-o-matic Supermart has changed their coupons. Now you can't swap them for plastic surgery. So all those tubes of New Orleans-style Cottil-i-Lard dog sausage…
|
228473
|
We walk in silence. We water our plants. We don’t eat as well as we should. We try to love. We try to forget.
|
22843820
|
They cut the tall specious tree storms snapped the night in two or three. At times
they pause most piously to count each ring of truth, drive nails into the stiff cathartic spine, divine if this unseasoned cigar topiary agrees with its own everlasting te
|
228364
|
"...if Rosie O'Donnell were to attach a horn to her forehead, she'd move up the ranks as the deadliest creature in the world."
|
228310
|
I sighed and looked deep into his eyes. “There is nothing more powerful than denial.”
|
228399
|
feeling obligated to write/ is like feeling/ obligated to fuck.
|
2283147
|
I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY TO YOU, she lisps, and, with this, the fissure in the man’s head reaches the bottom of his chin and the hollow head splits in two.
|
2283012
|
"I called him a fucking loser and left."
|
22822111
|
“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
|
228200
|
Azure leaned on the wall outside the gymnasium. She pulled back the sleeve of her blouse and saw the shackle glow. Azure realized that her feet dragged across the ground, leaving behind straight-line grooves on the grass beside the sidewalk.
|
22822617
|
The Batman says it's his birthday. I take him at his word.
|
