2100 8 3
|
Morning claims me from sleep before I can say noYou wake up instantly from your alarm clock's ringYou are bright, enthusiastic, ready to cooperateIt will be a good dayYou shower, dress and I prepare your breakfastEggs, soft, toast two ways, one with salmon cream cheese,One…
|
210085
|
I could love them all, your people, /
Learn their differences, speak their tongues, /
When there is no one there to hold you /
But me, my arms would be wide enough /
To hold armies of your need. Do not forget.
|
210033
|
The white Styrofoam box sits on the prep station. It was delivered a few hours earlier. Half awake, I don a black apron and grab a large cutting board. To keep it from slipping, I put the cutting board on a damp towel laid…
|
209996
|
He told me he could feel an army of tears building up behind his eyes.
|
2099109
|
I hear the slightly scratched voice of Joan Baez coming from
the record player singing about the junipers in the pale moonlight,
applause erupting like hailstone on a corrugated iron roof.
I am singing back through the bedroom wall,
wishing the
|
20993017
|
It was a surprise they put me in a dormitory, not a cell,
|
209901
|
#1 MISCELLANEOUS NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
What kind of person would the author’s daughter, Gracie, become? That things didn’t look bright for her future was an understatement: Mother: alcoholic, dead at age 25 from puking her brains out; Father: m
|
209911
|
They sit, they create, they watch.
|
209961
|
Puberty, for Ellen, was less than an overnight event—yes, she got her period in a more or less timely fashion, but what her doctor referred to coolly as secondary sexual characteristics—namely, boobs—took their damned sweet time in coming.
|
20993020
|
Toting a sawed-off shotgun at the altar
|
209811
|
"Geez," I thought, "not only is this daredevil felon fellow my EXACT height and build — his co-conspiring gal-pal must be, too!" I exhaled what felt like a gallon’s worth of air though my nose. "This is just getting too fucking weird ..."
|
209800
|
Azure spent these years learning how to harness the four elements and find the four creatures that shackled her.
|
20982620
|
People go through life all the time with only one kidney, or with some of their female-parts removed.
|
209871
|
In a few brief moments the entire sky became full of this wetness and greyed to the point of almost blackening, and it was a Sunday morning, and the man thought that thoughts were strange things, because he had a piercing epiphany that there was no God..
|
20981613
|
I am a purveyor of leeches. All my
friends are purveyors of leeches.
We meet weekly to compare our wares.
|
20981614
|
Snow sheeted on the river...
|
2098116
|
You haven't lived until she dances just for you ..
|
20972713
|
This is not a story you expect to end at Cape Horn.
|
209792
|
“Dad’s a dick,” my sister said. I nodded. He threw $20 on the candy counter for one small bag of popcorn and told the girl to keep the change.
|
209711
|
Jonas Griffin stared out the bay window as he drank his morning cup, his eyes gleaming with something between wistfulness and disdain at Reynold who sat patiently in the adjacent yard, leaning against the majestic oak tree that towered in its hundred year
|
20971614
|
The psychiatrist was a man who clearly meant to calm his patients, the students. You could tell by his sweater and his neatly combed, plumy hair and the wire-rim glasses he wore. But he was not good at his job. You could tell this by how bad he was at cal
|
209722
|
There are worse things than getting your ass kicked by a 12 year old Puerto Rican kid. This was exactly my thinking as he stood over me, his pre-pubescent screams sounding like a baby Bruce Lee, preparing to finish me off.
|
20961715
|
When you prime tobacco the old way . . .
|
20961611
|
He runs a mail-order business from a storefront and distributes a catalog of disappeared things.
|
209664
|
“I better go. My mom needs me at home,” she says. Soft. Smooth. Firm. Sweet. Maybe I’m pushing too hard. I kiss her on the cheek and she stiffens in response. My heart bleats.
|
209663
|
Danny said that you like him now. He smiled like it was the best news that he could give me, but his eyes dared me. …
|
2096108
|
a mid-life crisis in 55 words
|
2095255
|
" Not a day goes by/ that isn't stabbed with common sorrow"--Maurice Manning Crazy's alright by me if it's a harmless plea for some little sanity, or unavoidable by birth but it just won't do for tricks. Like say I go over there right…
|
2095169
|
Sometimes you can't sleep.
|
20952011
|
...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...
|
