2048 15 17
|
born to be mistreated by beasts in human shapes
|
204885
|
Your pajamas torture us.
When moist they uncomfortably cling. They have evil buttons, and they cause us to stumble on them in the dark.
|
20481415
|
A crone dressed in black pours liquid from a bottle onto the egg. Whiskey. Gasp! The egg cooks before our eyes!
|
20481614
|
There are simply no more words around me quite full enough yet to sort of cancel outthese more than emptied ones. I'm sorry. There might be some forever fields left ofcrowded purple flowers if you look hard enough but no mountain's majestyto…
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204811
|
WIFE (calling back from kitchen): "Dick Cheney's penis!"
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2047146
|
"Are you all right?" I ask. He blinks. He sits up. I help him stand. He looks sorrowfully at his coffee cup, which is on the floor.
|
2047108
|
Twelve people in the band,
the two women arrive first
(arrive on time).
|
20474722
|
Only strong personalities can endure such size, the weak ones are extinguished by it.
|
2047146
|
The winter following their son's death, Mr. Kelly's wife became absorbed by the tracks that ran in back of their house. At any given hour in the night, he'd hear her in the next room, their son's old room where she now slept, shuffling through dresser drawers. He…
|
20472112
|
She could live there forever, in that smokey memory...
|
2046149
|
for the rush of longing
and brush with flight
that is her imagination
will surely lift her above the traffic
|
204693
|
Backs in the grass, legs straight, bare feet resting at angles, Rachel and I, both of us seven, looked up through the oak limbs that made black lightning cracks across a blinding blue sky. Three hula hoops sat trapped in the trees’ sprawled grasp.
|
2046118
|
Erin Hoffmeyer Zulkoski. I was at work today, doodling on a piece of scrap paper. I often find myself writing my name, practicing my signature, for when I become famous. I have always written "Erin Zulkoski." Today, I wrote "Erin Hoffmeyer." This…
|
20462312
|
You, the correct Other, the one I am looking for, you have exacting standards concerning where things must go.
|
2045168
|
I didn't go to China, however. I would have gone there in debt wearing their clothing. I was afraid to owe even $4,000 (what I still owe) living overseas.
|
204520
|
. . . not if I have anything to do with it.
|
204587
|
Whenever talk dies, or darkness gathers too closely around the breakfast table, everyone knows the list of ritual activities we can brightly suggest to skip the day forward.
|
204411
|
Ikkyu liked coming over especially at dinner. I'm a great cook and even though he no longer needed to eat himself, the idea of a sumptuous meal and a nice bottle of wine appealed to him. We'd commune about the poetry of karma flowers, seafood, and women, he in his robes and…
|
2044115
|
You aren’t easy to explain, you Americans.
|
204321
|
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.
|
2043119
|
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
|
2043103
|
They slept in the same bed but that was all they had in common. He, an editor, had shelves filled with literary works and she, his wife of many years and never much of a reader, had strewn their penthouse apartment with Madeline children’s books.
|
204332
|
Knowing this is too long for here I won't be crushed or enraged if no one has the time to read it. Also, it's not fiction.
|
20422215
|
A boy stalks three deer across an open field.
|
2042107
|
He shows me how lift the windshield wipers up, clean under them, put them down and I follow him around, watch him slap the sham over the van, pull it away, slap again. I do the same, stop every few minutes like Daddy does, hold it out, twist, wring the sh
|
204221
|
The dump smelled of the chaos of creation, of rusting metal and burned glass, chemicals and rancid rainwater, wet cardboard and rotting wood, paint slaking off clapboards and drums.
|
204210
|
I've been struck with a bout of writer's block, struggling to get pen to page or finger to keyboard....So I make paper airplanes.
|
20421710
|
We sat all in a muffledlittle line up, on theconcrete lips of tomorrow'ssleepy chin, like all the world's good little children should, as the paradelimped itself slowly by, slapping itself against the young day'sexcitement like a damaged flattire, trying its…
|
2042117
|
Your specific request that I never submit to you again; ever, is cause for puzzlement, yet strangely motivating.
|
204173
|
Ancient erections loom aloft
ringed by decades
centuries for some
in gnarled scabs of pine.
|
