2097 0 0
|
Momo told me not to mind her, but I did. At night, after he'd tucked me in, I could hear him on the phone in the living room, talking for a long time. Early this morning he woke me up and gave me my backpack. ‘Put some clothes in here', he said. ‘We're going on a trip.'
|
2097 16 4
|
Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.
|
2097 19 9
|
I screwed my courage to the sticking point and asked him if he had shot down any Japanese airplanes. He grinned at me. “One,” he said.
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2096 24 16
|
Veiled by tenuous clouds and dirty air,
|
2096 9 11
|
The understanding we made was neatly wrapped up in its own blue tissue cocoon like a neatly rolled joint and dumped unceremoniously into the forgotten past like a plate of leftover digitized lies. The lid was slammed shut. Time passes too tightly. And you …
|
2096 10 4
|
"I sighed heavily. 'Goddamn it...' I spat under my breath. 'Every motherfucking time..."
|
2095 7 4
|
She began guiding Penny’s arms, whispering movements through her body. Memory and experience sang through every fiber of their being. The song had become her life.
|
2095 5 3
|
A strange and unexpected shift has occurred.
|
2095 2 1
|
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…
|
2095 5 3
|
Maybe God couldn’t find His bifocals, and that’s why my check for ten million hasn’t shown up yet. Maybe a stray dog in heaven ate my check. Maybe God went bankrupt like everyone else. Okay, so maybe at the end of life I’ll balance my checkbook.
I do
|
2095 25 14
|
Did we get Jihadi John?/
And the highway to Mosul?//
What’s the score?
|
2095 2 2
|
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…
|
2095 2 1
|
A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?”
“Do I know you?”
“It's Bill.”
The side of his little brother's thin face
|
2094 7 3
|
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
|
2094 1 1
|
A 1960’s of walking sugar beet fields to remove the rogue bolters by hand and on other days painting the ironwork of cattle sheds with red oxide. Then a 1970’s when the self-inking explosion of tattoos on his hands and then his body began.
|
2094 5 0
|
once wedding cake
under pillows.
now fluffy frosting
on squashed defeat
|
2093 5 4
|
Often we sit in silence and age. We are observers of dust, fashioning ourselves into antiques.
|
2093 24 7
|
I watched as the light fled
from your eyes,
No slowly dimming lamp,
|
2093 23 10
|
An Ayurvedic astrologer tells her that she is a child of India. Is a girl born in Indiana a mistake of just two letters on a Scrabble board?
|
2093 4 1
|
I think theorems and hypotheses
but all that comes out is punching and smashing
frustrated hate flows where I'd prefer to know love.
|
2093 1 1
|
I rummage around to see which of our many countertop appliances might do the trick. Yogurt maker? No, I need something with more muscle.
The Cuisinart--just the thing! I pick through the detachable blades—where’s the isotope shredder?
|
2093 8 3
|
When you last produced writing on a manual typewriter, was it before or after your first sexual experience, or maybe during? Manual or otherwise. Which do you recall with more enthusiasm...
|
2092 0 1
|
The everlasting shone through when skirting the tenuous threshold of the two worlds.
|
2092 0 0
|
Azure walked through the fog as though she were walking to class. Her hands swayed through the mist and felt the thickness of the cloud through her fingers
|
2092 9 7
|
500 miles
all the way from Omaha
nine hours
on the back of a flatbed truck
|
2092 9 4
|
And I watched,
from her warm bed,
the curtains dancing
in the window
|
2092 11 7
|
He was her summer fling, the first cock to crow when the sun rose over her tequila smile.
|
2092 8 8
|
The trouble began in October, when Ava, an embittered receptionist who worked at a small museum housed in a five-story Westside brownstone, discovered that the floors were littered with enormous grey feathers
|
2092 17 14
|
When you move to the music of a woman
|
2092 5 0
|
Besides, that might have been the area of his birth, and if so, Jacob was now the director, priest, pallbearer, driver, and custodian of a hometown funeral
|