2097 5 5
|
Your voice is yearning,
Like a sad song on the radio,
A yarn spun to make hearts break.
|
2096 2 2
|
His birthday buddy was like a wife to him: they were born a day apart.
This was coordinated, he believe, in the womb. Well, to be more accurate, wombs. She was due two weeks earlier but waited; he two weeks later but cut his womb-time (as the kids call i
|
2096 8 6
|
The Ocean used to be ours. When the stars were still fire and they were the only light burning though the dim, hazy nights, the ocean was ours. Before the smog, and the lights that were carried by the men who rose from the sea, the ocean was ours. We…
|
2096 23 20
|
There's always a sound, something triggering the fear.
|
2096 6 1
|
To my right, blank stares interchange with closed eyelids on an unkempt face. The minutes drip into the endless sea of night outside the window, each time creating a deeper blackness.
|
2096 8 4
|
... we both know how we go to fresh air like fish, gasping.
|
2096 2 0
|
I made my way quietly out back and sat in Helga’s whitewashed porch swing, listening to the first faint sounds of big band music drift out of Helga’s open windows and into the cooling summer air. The darkness was moving in slow from the east, interrup
|
2096 2 2
|
We passed a dead cat lying up against a guard rail, its fur stringing and wet and exposing its bloated skin which had a purple tint to it. Not my work, Death said, smoke trickling out of one eye socket.
|
2095 20 18
|
|
2095 0 0
|
Alysia stopped for a moment. She knew what she was going to say, but held back her words and thoughts. Chisame took advantage of her hesitance.
|
2094 5 2
|
this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh
|
2094 3 1
|
I have never met Joe’s brother, of course.
|
2094 0 0
|
At night, on these New England roads, there is no light, no pink sodium-vapor glow, no guideposts.
|
2094 6 3
|
Doc and I talked for several hours. When I told him Mona was pregnant, he turned his head and looked at me. “Who's the father?” he asked. Don't know, I said. Mona didn't know, either.
|
2094 6 1
|
I can feel the souls
of those who perished
here
They’re still here
like old kites
hanging in the sky
tattered, but they
won’t come down
or can’t come down
just yet
because they haven’t
fulfilled their
unborn promises
t
|
2094 6 2
|
You longed to rip off her butterfly wings and watch her scream in agony. You ached to carve the steel from her eyes.
|
2094 1 0
|
I am wearing stolen socks. Not because I haven't any of my own, and not because they are an exact fit. Only because they soothe my emptiness inside.
|
2093 0 0
|
Ai thought she was flying at first, but she felt herself leaning on something. Before she could figure out what was happening, her eyes closed again, and had a short dream.
|
2093 3 3
|
salmon
maple syrup
horseradish
smoke detector
the list read, scrawled in purple marker on the refrigerator door.
|
2093 5 8
|
Mama hung them everywhere. It started with just a few, in our apartment and outside on the brick. She made walls into windows.
|
2093 20 6
|
The book has known many women’s hands, something erotic and frequently checked out from our local library. Its cover depicts a man and a woman, both with improbable if not impossible bodies. I believe the term is bodice-ripper.
|
2093 1 0
|
Danica saw her hand with the ring lifted up by Oryn. Both of their eyes locked onto the red gem and Danica understood what Oryn offered.
|
2092 3 2
|
...and 55 words to tell you about it.
|
2092 2 0
|
The pizza was perfect, ingredients genuine, not artificial: crust charred slightly; cheese gooey; sauce steaming, requiring careful eating lest the mouth suffer burns. Such quality was becoming rare around town. The product in Manhattan, by and large,
|
2092 3 2
|
'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'
|
2092 9 6
|
He was the kind of man that I would rather have declawed than date, and then leave him on a gurney, helpless and anaesthetized. Cliff Eames had made me feel that way since we were teenagers. He would never be helpless. …
|
2091 19 11
|
No snippet to see, here. The piece is so short a snippet would be the whole thing.
|
2091 17 10
|
When I squint at her from across the table I can see the waveforms created by her carrier signal.
|
2091 9 5
|
so for penance, the priest gave me the full twelve Stations of the Cross
|
2091 21 15
|
“Last night the Scots invaded Sweden,” I wrote, “to retrieve the silver filched from the Irish the Norwegians had in their coffers when Sweden conquered. The Swedes offered the Nobel to a Scots writer to keep ... the peace."
|