1581 12 6
|
“Jesus fall the second time. You want a map? Ten shekels.”
|
158165
|
We lingered there in that room for a few moments, stuck in the awkward goo of rejection and regret. At some point, I’m not sure when, I left, found a bathroom down the hall and washed my ear.
|
1581135
|
Dad woke us up and said it was time to go.
|
158142
|
I had the hair of a metal god, cracking it against the air whenever the stereo belched fists.
|
158196
|
We married in the ruins of a pachinko hall, the tiny bones in the pocket of your tracksuit luring a pack of wild dogs out from the underpass.
|
1580138
|
on this scenic route you will likely encounter a handful of bicycle spoke lobster traps.
|
15801510
|
There was gonna be a rumble in our schoolyard. An outright brawl. It was gonna be just like Blackboard Jungle. Only real. Not some movie at the Duwamish Drive-In. Every boy in my school, it seemed like, was lined up outside except me. All the third and fourth graders…
|
1580911
|
I answered with my usual economy of words. If someone wants more, they must ask, and he did.
|
158031
|
Over fifty plastic flamingos stood silently at attention... as if eating sea urchins out of our lawn.
|
158066
|
The book mind, just like its namesake the book, is capable of movement only after its assembly: otherwise, it boasts no moving parts.
|
15793114
|
The image was startlingly unfamiliar. Looking at it, no one would guess it had been their last attempt, their last failure. No one would believe that they had never really been that way, or that the life they shared was built on mind games, manipulation a
|
157921
|
Standing hard at the windowCold clouds move, slowBlue horizon in the distance—It's just a slice of blue.All this beautyI miss it in the bitterness.I'm consumed by the missingThe emptinessThe unfairnessAlways some unfairness cropping upand capturing joy.Glancing high…
|
157975
|
A secret search rolled from Odette's eyes. A gulch split her down the middle and she had the world believing this was the way she liked it. Odette was a woman who spent entire days bending backward within herself, never letting on that she was…
|
1579173
|
My swinging purse sent saucers tinkling to the tile and the copper-headed waitress flew over, swooping on the shatter, clutching clean forks like a handful of flowers.
|
157861
|
“Your children are beautiful,” she said, handing back his wallet after removing several bills. Her mouth was fringed by bitten-off melon lipstick, a calm kind of mad. She told him to call her Sally, “like the song McCartney rips his lungs on.” She…
|
15781211
|
I was having festive sex flashbacks and wasn't thinking sharply.
|
157888
|
They were a family, now, these three: child, widow, widower.
|
15782719
|
On the bus I sat like an ounce.
|
157843
|
The following was written under disagreeable circumstances, in that I was present for them.
|
1578104
|
"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."
|
1578128
|
The blue Victorian at 1145 White Street shifts in its foundation, creaks, and settles in for the night. The girls are bundled into their beds. My wife, too, has gone to sleep. I’m alone in the kitchen, steeping chamomile tea, coughing phlegm into the wr
|
15781613
|
The boy giggled, splashing his father and howling at the cold.
|
157897
|
I never looked at her face.
|
157800
|
The words of prophets only serve to demonstrate that ‘unreliable narrative’ can often result in poor literature; unfortunately, poor literature can attract a very large following.
|
157794
|
Where I grew up, you did not venture casually into ocean waters.
|
157744
|
Blueberries are like testicles: you have to hold them gently, from underneath.
|
15772215
|
The river’s not/
a river but/
a FEMA map/
of flooding probabilities.
|
157764
|
"...I wonder if it held magical powers..."
|
15771313
|
Go ahead, boy, pout like a fool.
|
157700
|
If anyone should wonder whether a purveyor of weekly ghost tales on television ("A World Beyond", which I host, was rated number six in fall of '55), might come to feel undone by a case of extradimensional foulness, they shall herein find their answer.
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