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Birds FlySeven Poemsby Darryl Pricefor Charlotte and Mel, as always"We should insist on joy in spite of everything."--Tom Robbins“I don't need your love. I don't need you to understand. I just need you to listen.”—Perfume Genius1. I Want to Sing to…
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Oryn woke up in her desk. Sweat trickled from her forehead. Staring at her notepad, with her latest calculation, she forgot to go home. Her thoughts of Alysia calmed for now, but still lingered from her dreams.
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Borges must be so proud somewhere
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There's a mirror in front of me and I thought it was so I could see myself, but I didn't want to see me.
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chet baker shades my eyes
rippling through the cool water
sometimes we feed the fish
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this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh
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Night fell and the photographer slept, one hand between Prue's legs.
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Ma tells me not to put a tampon between my legs. For fear of cotton fornication.
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“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.
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"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."
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• Don’t confuse the virtues of bananas with the virtues of banana bread
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“I heard your dad took out the Dairy Queen drive-thru,” said Pat.
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“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."
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It seems the people of this house were a happy family – The smiling faces, the children’s enthusiasm tells me as much. I wonder what happened to them.
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...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...
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Down South now means August cold snap,
the forties roaring my wool cap
off my head.
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My favorite was a red bowler, a man's hat, which I never dared wear outside my tiny bedroom. My three brothers wanted it too much to take that kind of a risk. They'd poke me with various sharp objects: the serrated edge of the bread knife, the rusted TV
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Years After she can go home.
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We didn't wear shoes in the summer, except for Sunday school and church. The soles of our feet were black and tough as shoe leather.
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It was only when blood began to drip onto the page that he realized he'd been hit.
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When they called him down there to the morgue to identify the body, he drove behind the wheel of his truck like some steady maniac on a long haul. The Ford 150 cried out for new shocks, but that hardly mattered. Mud plastered side panels and…
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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
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what smells like love may not be love at all
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[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…
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'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'
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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…
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Two-way conversation with God.
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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. …
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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.
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pluck me from the charred grate
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