2147 11 4
|
I sink until water saturates my lashes, waiting, breathless, for the words to stop.
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214786
|
no one else comes in my back door but you
|
214633
|
salmon
maple syrup
horseradish
smoke detector
the list read, scrawled in purple marker on the refrigerator door.
|
214680
|
The trainers looked at her and smiled and they were still one creature with four legs and two heads. The old man’s left eye moved in sync with the younger one’s right eye.
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21462410
|
One sunny morning, a big-bellied ball of yellow fur surveyed a yard full of prospective adopters and ran straight to one.
She’d been chosen.
|
214661
|
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.
|
214610
|
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.
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21452018
|
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2145255
|
" 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…
|
2145123
|
....sees the beginning of a new day through the closed shutters, hears the guard washing up at the sink, feels the beginning of a cry in his throat.
|
214522
|
Sloe Gin Fizz is pink
Bombay Gin comes in blue
I’m sitting here at Emerald’s
And all I can think of is –
you.
|
21451615
|
• Don’t confuse the virtues of bananas with the virtues of banana bread
|
214521
|
When I glance at the bedside clock I realize that we have been making love in one way or another for nearly three hours now. I am filled with a certain secret smugness that I am still going strong. It has been a long time since I’ve done anything quite li
|
214520
|
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
|
214522
|
Most nights while in his sleep, with his one good eye deeply shut, the old man can hear the whispers of the specter in the remote wanderings, holding the surrounding woodlands in its snare. The sound of it closing in, with the bones of the universe crushing in…
|
2144104
|
Ma tells me not to put a tampon between my legs. For fear of cotton fornication.
|
21441313
|
Talking about a Friend Over a Cup or Two of Coffee “Their first fight was over school lunches. Free school lunches. She taught Kindergarten in a public special ed center for emotionally disturbed children. The…
|
214443
|
...I grew up in a provincial town which at the time had no bookstore and no library — no library even at school...
|
21441313
|
He stays a couple of yards behind me as we slog uphill. I try to diffuse the tension with a coy toss of head, slip on wet leaves. My ankle rolls and I splat noisily down. From my new angle his beard looks less stylish—bristles straggle all up his neck. He maintains…
|
21442011
|
...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...
|
2143116
|
Down South now means August cold snap,
the forties roaring my wool cap
off my head.
|
2143108
|
"good luck, and be assured acceptance for representation or publication is based on different criteria at different agencies and we are sure you will yet find someone mentally deficient enough to give your book a shot."
|
214392
|
“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.
|
21431210
|
The coffins pile up gnawing dust on the glass panes to the rims of my binoculars. Shadowy cracks of stifling proportions, gliding over my eyes a requiem of mahogany. At dawn they heave between the workers’ hands, leave their resting places for a green tra
|
214301
|
“I heard your dad took out the Dairy Queen drive-thru,” said Pat.
|
21431712
|
Conceptio culpa
Nasci pena
Labor vita
Necesse mori
|
214382
|
Later that night, he lay his shivering children in his own bed, the bed that betrayed and abandoned him just a few years ago. It will protect them now.
|
214252
|
this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh
|
21421617
|
what smells like love may not be love at all
|
2142128
|
Two-way conversation with God.
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