2000 8 5
|
Your pajamas torture us.
When moist they uncomfortably cling. They have evil buttons, and they cause us to stumble on them in the dark.
|
2000128
|
Cousin Rudy pulled up a cod /
out of season /
we were rigged for haddock, /
it was dressed for the weather
|
199921
|
This stage of Junior’s young life was static, moving very little off-center since his graduation from high school five years ago. Treading water both professionally and emotionally never worried him. Not until after what transpired that night when Pr
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1999157
|
A retired feminist literary agent named Jackie and her boyfriend, Jock, were on board. Jock was kind as one might expect of a man traveling with a feminist, and Jackie was happy yet stern. She mentored me one day over lunch.
|
199972
|
Sally was bathing Homeless Hope in her bathtub when the phone rang in the kitchen.
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199821
|
The barista with the fake rainbow nails and amazing cleft. . . .
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1998199
|
that day is my barking up and leaves falling down story, but in their elephant slowness it seemed no more than the regular run of the sun slightly disappearing here, and then maybe reappearing there, like a lost color, way over the horizon, or the…
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199853
|
You’ve gathered in church to wait for Jesus. Unarguable signs have let you know this is the day. This is the day of the second coming. This is Judgment Day.
It was a no-brainer to wait at the church.
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199800
|
They tell me I’m crazy. I say I’m just keeping up.
|
1998117
|
Your specific request that I never submit to you again; ever, is cause for puzzlement, yet strangely motivating.
|
199721
|
If the photographs made sounds, they would rumble like static from an impending thunderstorm, pressed between the pages of a yellowing dictionary. Compressed sound, searching for the proper words.
|
19971714
|
Unfinished, deeply flawed stories require the kind of handling you see in movies where a Virus That Will Doom Mankind is disposed of by scientists in hazmat suits.
|
199721
|
At work I recommended someone go to the Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta. I told you about recommending it to someone.
“I always wanted to go back there,” I said.
“You did? You never told me,” you said.
|
1996149
|
for the rush of longing
and brush with flight
that is her imagination
will surely lift her above the traffic
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19961715
|
Sometimes he made us punch pillows. "Harder!" the shrink would yell.
|
19962318
|
Five girls wobble into the train car. Their blistered feet protrude from the bedazzled straps of their sandals. Conductor: “Girls in the back with the open containers, you can't have those on the train.” A heavy-set girl in a belted yellow mini-dress…
|
199600
|
She did not know what it would feel like, how it would happen … but she knew it would be done. She knew that it would be magical, like nothing she could see or hear through the cornfields or around the markets.
|
199611
|
I read the runes, the cards, the signs, the sticks. I consulted tarot cards and read tea leaves. I listened to you, deconstructed every word and look and tone with the harshest logic and cynicism I could muster. If there was some way to decipher what you
|
199621
|
A herd of garbage trucks groaned down dark streets filling their black hydraulic hearts with rotten trashcans and glass, and a smile ate her whole face. I showed her a text from a friend: "T-minus 10 seconds till meltdown."She laughed and I wrote back.A small,…
|
199523
|
In reenactments of the pressing to death of Giles Corey, Walter’s friends stacked pillows onto his chest while he defied his inquisitors.
|
1995119
|
oh, sure i’m still running around like a heads-up/off/prophet/profit/fit trying to cut off my very own de/(con)instruction and all other sordid a•void•able & available /a-Babel-Trumpish towers of post & toastmodern doom/daze/haze
|
1995138
|
Heaven’s a blast! It’s like a big summer camp in space...We are the weavers of the tie-dyed sky.
|
1995198
|
It lies in rusting riot
of shadowed days.
Flying high its emblem wings,
forever stalled.
|
19951913
|
old men with crispy sunburnt ears
|
19942515
|
I came from the only flat region in the kingdom of mountains and fjords, and called the city “Down in the Dumps”. The beleaguering mountains smelled a flatlander when they saw one, and hated me right back.
|
199483
|
For fifteen years Wendy waited for Harry to leave his wife. From time to time, there’d been ultimatums, break-ups too, but they never stuck. Now Wendy’s luck was about to change.
It was Tuesday, Wendy and Harry’s standing night to be together. His wif
|
19941415
|
A crone dressed in black pours liquid from a bottle onto the egg. Whiskey. Gasp! The egg cooks before our eyes!
|
199332
|
But Jana insisted to see this miracle, this antidote for the mundanity of existence.
|
19932018
|
Can you see me dying? 'Not quite',
Said Mummy, 'because it happens
Very slowly all the time.
|
199362
|
It’s two o’clock in the morning, and I’m lying in bed, wide awake, drenched in sweat. I know what I need–a Thin Mint cookie–but I don’t know where I’m gonna find one.
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