2011 3 2
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Six months ago, Gary hired a goateed designer to "defoliate" the office, trucking out all the ficus trees and spanish moss to make room for curved sheets of fiberglass and, as he called it, "negative space." Now, her voice echoes off the concrete floors.
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20103514
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We were destined by chemistry and plastic figurines to give it a go.
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201021
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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.
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2010149
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for the rush of longing
and brush with flight
that is her imagination
will surely lift her above the traffic
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2010128
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Cousin Rudy pulled up a cod /
out of season /
we were rigged for haddock, /
it was dressed for the weather
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200921
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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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200921
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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.
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2008157
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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.
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200800
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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.
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200882
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It would wander the hallways after the 3:45 bell, after the last class, after the students had all disappeared with the homework they'd never finish, the papers they'd forget to write, after Nate the janitor pushed his broom through the endless doorways,
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2008199
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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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20081913
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old men with crispy sunburnt ears
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200853
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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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2007107
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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
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20071414
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No one means to go that way, on an errand to the mall....
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2007115
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You aren’t easy to explain, you Americans.
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200700
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Alysia slowed down for a moment. She clutched her head again. She looked up and found herself at a playground. There was a familiarity in the air.
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200621
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The barista with the fake rainbow nails and amazing cleft. . . .
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2006117
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Your specific request that I never submit to you again; ever, is cause for puzzlement, yet strangely motivating.
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200632
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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.
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20051715
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Sometimes he made us punch pillows. "Harder!" the shrink would yell.
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20052318
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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…
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200523
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In reenactments of the pressing to death of Giles Corey, Walter’s friends stacked pillows onto his chest while he defied his inquisitors.
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2005198
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It lies in rusting riot
of shadowed days.
Flying high its emblem wings,
forever stalled.
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200500
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They tell me I’m crazy. I say I’m just keeping up.
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2004168
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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.
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200472
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Sally was bathing Homeless Hope in her bathtub when the phone rang in the kitchen.
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200400
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Pussy’s eyes narrowed, her dark, luxurious fur quivering on her back. “How can you say such a thing! It’s not true.”
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20041614
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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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2004147
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I cannot make love to a woman who looks like David Byrne.
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