2158 0 0
|
He heard her crying out behind the curtain that had been drawn around the bed. Each cry was more strained than the last. She complained about the burning, called the nurses "putane" and threatened to rip out the device they'd inserted into her. He sat t
|
21581614
|
Snow sheeted on the river...
|
2157105
|
"She has a lot of time to think these days. What else is a woman to do with the rest of her life?"
|
215761
|
"I expect 50% of the agreed fee. In cash.” I dropped the envelope at the designated spot and parked up the street.
|
215711
|
"How did you know he was a nobody if you didn't look at him, eh? Did you raise your eyes and look him in the face? Are you my wife or a whore?"
|
21571411
|
She was petite, pear-shaped, white, the girlfriend of a friend who'd done his degree in Russian Literature, but that's not the only reason I liked him. The husband I had for a while traveled whether he needed to or not and so I'd go with Julie and Phillip to movies,…
|
215754
|
The apartment was a second-level place, so I went down the steps and looked through the stained glass window of the door. “Ah hell,” I said to myself. Raymond Carver and John Fante and Charles Bukowski were outside. I opened the door.
|
215784
|
He ate husks of bone and old paper scraps with yesterday's headlines, blowing down the street like tumbleweeds now at four o'clock in the morning.He wrapped himself in an old army coat against the November winds as he tramped back and forth, back and forth, up the ten…
|
215632
|
Rockin' Joe Heath stumbled into the stairwell in nothing but a black Zildjian t-shirt, shushing himself, trying to see right, pounding head. He recalled the old lily pattern of the wallpaper and something about the tattered edges…
|
21563017
|
It was a surprise they put me in a dormitory, not a cell,
|
215610
|
Before I was 18 years old, in my small home town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, I invented the designer jean...
|
2156138
|
I had been in bed for a couple of days and by this I mean sleeping for fifteen or sixteen hours at a time. I don’t think that I believed in God anymore. I no longer knew how to stay awake.
|
215598
|
my father has a phobia of dentists./ he also once felt/ that if the house ran out of toilet paper/ he would lose his job.
|
215543
|
I wriggled in the bed and felt the sheets soaked with perspiration. My arms were lined with tape and tubing, needles pressed in veins. I reached for the cloth again and again, and every time they stopped me. The hands that came were cold and hard, urgent
|
21553313
|
There was dad sitting at the table, wide awake, reading glasses on nose, pen in hand above a Doppler graph of numbers on paper, one of many now-lost theorems, looking up as his son walked into the room.
|
2155189
|
but let's stop and take another look at things
could it be through our closed eyes
that we didn't really know what we were talking about
that there never was a surprise
|
21551613
|
I am a purveyor of leeches. All my
friends are purveyors of leeches.
We meet weekly to compare our wares.
|
215486
|
On top of the refrigerator is a small wooden box
|
215411
|
They sit, they create, they watch.
|
2154209
|
My mother’s old china no longer reflects. It’s value is now estimated as drywall.
|
215495
|
so for penance, the priest gave me the full twelve Stations of the Cross
|
215455
|
Your voice is yearning,
Like a sad song on the radio,
A yarn spun to make hearts break.
|
2153149
|
i stained his hockey sheets
right over the red wings
|
2153178
|
I kiss his sunburned nose, so nice under the beach house. We hear the shower of palm leaves like wings getting ready. We talk about a time we'll no longer know each other, when he'll be sad in a bar in another state, slipping and sliding and petting lost dogs in the parking…
|
21522314
|
Henry yells at her when she lights cigarettes and candles. But this is her small secret ritual, her way of making good with the god she is no longer sure she believes in...
|
215271
|
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..
|
215275
|
Pow! I shoot him through his jelly donut.
|
215183
|
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…
|
21511313
|
Go ahead, boy, pout like a fool.
|
215121
|
...I told Uncle Lou I thought it (trans-gendering) looked like a thoughtful way of occupying the world. It was a personal triumph, for some individuals, over the destructive affects of denial. Besides, it hurt no one, and it didn’t destroy property. I alw
|
