845 0 0
|
None of them knew the emptiness my bravado covered. I moved through life a pale shadow of a being. In the mornings I was afraid when I went into the bathroom to gaze into the mirror I would find no reflection staring back at me, that I had finally become
|
1246 3 2
|
I cut myself. Often. The bloodslice like thin lips parted/in prayer.
life’s color drained to ashen/as the old world spins, pirouettes/like a circus dog on the back/of a galloping horse.
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1484 11 9
|
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1666 21 13
|
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1205 2 2
|
You have such a complicated mind /
for refusing to believe in God /
just like any damned liberal /
whose fingerprints /
crowd the faces of a thousand /
dollar bills /
being passed around your great nation...
|
1027 11 8
|
how much is downed/
to counteract the down/
with deeper down.
|
2357 13 6
|
she's greeting everyone like she's the new fucking Queen of England with her size Z tits, the sequined gown clinging to her overstuffed figure like a mold she'll have to live with,
|
1200 4 5
|
His daddy died in his sleep. Went to bed one might and never got up.
|
1138 4 0
|
New Year's Eve 1984: I was a hit with my outfit. When I walked into the house, a teenage girl looked me up and down and said, “Nice knickerbockers.” My cousins dragged me to the living room floor which was crowded with my family dancing and I started…
|
1041 0 0
|
Let us talk granola
and improvising
on the margins of
munchies and breakfast.
|
1166 2 2
|
There is a roofer straddling part of our house, pushing shingles off of our roof with the edge of a shovel. …. I've thought seriously, at times, about becoming a nurse. Seeing your mother in a hospital bed, hooked up to a tube, more than one, too…
|
1333 8 6
|
You speak English so well.
|
1109 5 2
|
My wife makes coffee naked. Didn't used to. Back then, before the accident, she hated her body. Says that's why she gave it to me. She's serious about it too. The coffee, I mean. Developed a whole ritual around buying, measuring, pouring. Every day it's the…
|
1659 14 13
|
With his hand, he sees through walls: from the street,
From Schonbran park, girls go to rest in his house.
They sleep off parents’ beatings. They eat.
|
1909 16 13
|
1. Everyone disappears.2. Stars map themselves.3. The moon fills her bathtub over and over. You can't watch it for too long or you go mad, shouting, "Just get in, get in!"4. The ghosts of certain broken poets stand under apple trees and lean their hands on the…
|
1184 13 8
|
Spying is a different concern. Privacy also. I feel there is a loss of privacy just in believing or realizing it is possible; our forebears did not experience loss of privacy digitally, perhaps in another way.
|
1358 6 2
|
Eddie meets Sarah Packard, a “college girl” played by Piper Laurie. She walks with a limp, a fact Eddie doesn’t notice at first because she’s sitting down at a diner table in a bus station. She’s alcoholic and writes poetry.
|
1963 10 6
|
A new constellation in the sweet hereafter.
|
1206 14 6
|
So many dreams I need to visit, though
|
1214 2 2
|
Secretly she suspected she was really a witch. She didn't have green skin or scraggly black hair, and certainly no flying monkeys. Maybe those came over time, the more bad things you did, the more ugly you became until all the world could see how horrible
|
1420 2 3
|
Ride me, I say, and you never hear. No matter how I shine my padding, it's never what draws you to me. I only get to touch you when you feel guilty, and most of the time, it's only through shorts and graduated compression socks. What does my desire matter? It all comes out…
|
1284 5 4
|
I feel unlike myself, I think. I've been afraid of notebooks, pens, writing. I've hoped for telekinesis between empty pages and my mind. The hoping leaves me empty handed, and I have nothing to show. I feel unlike myself. I feel the whites of my eyes as…
|
752 25 10
|
|
536 0 0
|
I know how deeply your hands plunged into my fire. I remember putting my arms around your back and holding you in the flames for as long as I could bear it. And I remember feeling you slip away, serenely, with that light that urges the rose up out of my s
|
1108 4 2
|
1. Pharmacy Randy approached the counter. It appeared that the only person in the pharmacy was the pharmacist himself, Mr. Crubby, and from the sound of the stiff white bag crumpling he was busy saving someone's life, or at least ameliorating someone's …
|
2156 19 13
|
Was that the door slamming?
|
1568 24 17
|
His head was usually full of ah ha!, a luminescence that folded around obstacles like smoke.
|
832 0 0
|
Motivation always needs to come from somewhere. For some all it takes is a sunny day, a smile from a stranger or a simple pat on the back. Others demand a fire lit, a carrot dangled or a whip cracked. Yet here the sun had set, the fire extinguished and th
|
1124 1 1
|
My friend and I were once walking the aisles of a supermarket because we decided we were going to have roasted duck. We didn’t know how to cook, but as the old Filipino reds used to say: If not now, when? If we don’t learn how to cook now, as in NOW, then
|
1075 1 1
|
It was a mildly windy day of the working week in the financial district of the city—the bright morning sun was out—when a security guard was called to the fifteenth floor to deal with a disruption.
“This way.”
Someone pointed to a desk. At the desk
|