2272 9 5
|
You are lonely. Let me tell you about the smell of the rain.
|
227142
|
You like your life. Ducks march in a row. You've reached a certain age but you're strong. Healthy. You've got food, clothing, shelter. You have insurance and important papers. You don't have a man in your life, and you admit— Admit nothing. The…
|
22712422
|
But I came back around, after Robert Kennedy got shot, with one hand up your skirt and the other on the gear shift...
|
227067
|
The doorbell rang while Ron was masturbating.He closed his eyes tight. Tried to hold the image of Lori bent over the arm of the couch. No use. It was gone. Ron sighed, then levered the recliner down. Tied on the terry-cloth robe Lori had given him. He kicked aside an empty…
|
22702019
|
if we stare into the dark long
enough, we see ourselves at some end or
beginning –
|
22702514
|
And you know that notion just goes to show...
|
227011
|
You are fishing in a coffee cup. (Your fishing pole is a record player.)
|
227020
|
I was afraid of needles and ponds of water and I was transfixed by both.
|
227021
|
In the blue of the yard the twins boil and scrape,
twisting about beneath the sycamore tree.
|
227011
|
|
226971
|
It was a sloppy little factory town that could be beautiful, but never bothered trying. Sits on a big lake. More bars than churches, and too many of both. Racist. We hated anybody who didn’t believe in white Jesus
|
226963
|
She...learned the ways of men, especially foreign men, who eyed her mother even as they passed around pictures of their children, wallet-bound photographs that included their reluctantly smiling wives.
|
22681614
|
ornery women / in tall hats, suspender dads, kids deformed with / ribbons
|
226810
|
"Isn't it time to remove the nails, and put Jesus to rest once and for all," Mary asks.
|
226811
|
Let's be honest. Ugly people have an uphill battle in this culture. From the time they slide out of their ugly mothers they stand at the plate with two strikes.
|
22671410
|
. . . and the last thing you’ll smell will be new-cut pine.
|
226711
|
And here I am again.
I chew my nails. I tap my foot. I chew my nails. I sweat. I bleed. My nose bleeds. It drips. I drip. I'm dripping through my chair.
|
226742
|
“Can you do something about that those four stanzas of three lines each at the bottom of the basement steps?” my wife asked.
"That's a villanelle I'm working on."
|
226753
|
“I take him to see all those sexy movies,” she said, “because it puts the passion back in him. I love what he does to me when we get back home after those movies.”
|
2266103
|
Several friends—hers and his—hung around the edges of their marriage, and it would be naive to rule out the possibility of a few stray affairs. The thought didn’t anger him; on the contrary it amused him as if it were some trivia question, the answe
|
226663
|
I slide my hand under the sheets. It’s cool there. An impression. This is where she would be.
|
226645
|
All night the moon had watched him, and he’d been unable to return its stare. Finally there was sunlight, and Joško took up his rifle and rucksack. He had trouble keeping his balance at first, but gradually his legs steadied.
|
226631
|
Dear Mom, You told me the connection between a mother and her son is like no other connection. You carried me for nine months. You scheduled visits with the doctor; you thought and discussed and re-thought and re-discussed with dad what my name would be; you…
|
226641
|
His body echoed in the mirror/
cracked into distant images
|
2266175
|
I turn my head. Time starts running.
|
226566
|
The light, oblique and waning, filters through butcher’s paper to reveal a body suspended in death but never decomposing.
|
226520
|
Berto had come to live with me a month earlier. He’d been cursed by being the favored child of our parents. Their indulgence resulted in a 40 year old man and heroin addict from age 17 and all that accompanies such an existence such as thievery, larcen
|
22651512
|
This is the best kind of crime scene.
Spattered like gore from gunshots,
I'm left covered in trace evidence.
|
226471
|
In Nebraska, we found a dead man lying between the furrows of a field. He’d been there awhile in the heat and the sun, the only shade provided by a cloud of flies. The dead man lay on the ground, decaying, disappearing into the dirt:
|
2264118
|
You’re the girl that would sneak out to poetry readings instead of parties, watching fierce semi-bearded men reading their poems from hand-stapled zines.
|
