1078 0 0
|
It's hard not to sound dramatic when you begin a letter "On Earth..."
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722 2 0
|
|
903 0 0
|
Slowly
slowly
the veil is lifted
|
888 0 1
|
Of course it’s because she’s been drinking. Will she regret this? I don’t understand it but maybe it is something she has thought about for some time.
|
926 0 0
|
The dark staircase creaked as he crept down to the basement. The even whoosh-whoosh of the washing machine was comforting to him. He reached for the light as he entered the room. A dim bulb blinked on above him. There was a small table across the room f
|
1240 1 1
|
It was two days to town. His horse could only go one.
|
821 0 0
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SoCo, Burnette's, Grey Goose, Bacardi. The good stuff. We drank Bill’s stuff because his parents were lawyers and loved to drink too. We just drank when everyone was asleep. Sometimes we’d invite our friends, or girls—but mostly it was just us. You could
|
1212 4 1
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It's come down to this: you're a grown man afraid to face his own son. For the past few years there has been tension;…
|
660 2 1
|
He wore a jacket with just
a letter; by this conspicuous reserve
he hoped to show the others it didn’t matter what you did
last year, only who you hit in the here and now, and how hard.
|
1376 19 9
|
I know this: the sky is vast here//
and the sun unforgiving/
to any architecture not the best
|
3235 4 1
|
"Both my parents were hypnotists. As were two of my grandparents."
|
1415 6 1
|
You look at people
and despise them all.
|
1317 2 1
|
Naked Lady? I know that from somewhere. Then he remembered. That's what they called those old 1930's and 40's Conn saxophones, Naked Ladies. How would Smith know that?
|
1941 8 2
|
"Michael has had no drink, no cigarette, no illicit drug and very little illicit sex since September 14, 1989."
|
1386 3 3
|
The night wrapped its arms around us as we drove west, taking the highway past Medford towards Philly. The kids were asleep in the backseat and we were both counting the mile markers, staring out the windows with quiet eyes. I listened to the drone of the…
|
1355 1 0
|
He was almost dying when I reached the hospital. I walked past the open automatic sliding doors into the lobby, almost vacant except a few people milling around, the nurses fighting sleep behind the desks while waiting for their shift to end.
|
1966 3 1
|
She threw the wine glass on the floor.
|
1130 1 1
|
Lester walked back into the house. He was hungry but didn’t know what he wanted to eat. Really, he couldn’t remember how to fix anything he wanted. He walked over to turn on the television, but couldn’t find the on/off button. Surely the damn thing had an
|
1115 0 0
|
Your father, his father, and his before that, your mother, her mother, and all the way back have kept a tradition by chance or by will to each have a baby (or several) until…
|
945 0 0
|
I'm feeling almost better than you know A little bit better than the day before Waking up to a deafening scream Please, please don't hurt me no more Why do I feel like a lost dog? Staring outside the window pane How come I become dark? When the clouds begin to rain…
|
955 0 1
|
I need to be commended,
despite the wine glass
that threw itself
at your sister's head
of rollers. Imagine a pear
in the deli meat aisle
ripening behind glass...
|
1003 0 0
|
Rob was having a hard time of it. His whole life was like that-- in and out of jail for assault, robbery and selling drugs. He tried to go straight. A career counselor, had set him up, with a job in a warehouse. But he just couldn't…
|
625 0 0
|
I am so lost in thought
as I ride out of the woods
that I forget which way I ought
to turn, left or right; this can’t be good.
|
1328 2 1
|
He finished the omelet and started in on the short stack. He drowned the cakes in syrup.
-Never can have enough syrup.
|
67 0 0
|
‘Sometimes I look down, over this railing –’
—cars zipping tiny and soundless, the roads curling and the roofs speckled with white-hot skylights, dark mottled patches of repair, no stakes, no people, no noise –
‘ –and I consider jumping. Sitting on
|
1288 2 1
|
Are you a hostile person who gets into trouble when you express your anger? Would you like to annoy the hell out of people and get away with it?
|
2787 24 15
|
My life is life in shape alone./
The substance leaks away like blood/
removed by the embalmer’s art.
|
1476 1 1
|
He took a long, noisy sip from the glass of wine as he peered across the rim to see her walk by."Now SHE would never get our order wrong" he said to his two friends seated at the table with him.The two men looked at each other and laughed. It was obvious Johnny was…
|
876 0 0
|
I would read her stories on quiet summer days as we sat along the river, just the two of us stretched out in the tall grass, hidden in the shade of the pine trees lining the banks of the Mullica while a gentle breeze cooled our skin. She liked the way I read to…
|
163 2 1
|
...how he wished the will to live...
|