1200 5 4
|
I can trust you with my secrets, can’t I?
|
1335 5 4
|
Christmas night was closing in at the Cantrips alehouse in Aberdeen, a firm favourite for riggers and other men and women who lived life close to the horizon. Sometimes, on a Saturday night, things might get a bit rowdy but Mother O'Grady would stand firm and bring out…
|
699 5 5
|
into another bright vat of boiling over hot lies. It's sick, man, the way you'd rather dig for a supposed (royal) buried treasure than make a new beautiful thing start to happen, breakyour back, break your spirit, over and over, until there's nothing left to…
|
1430 6 4
|
A sunrise over the dark Atlantic, on a perfect beach day, tasting of salt and warmth and powdered sugar; of last, desperate kisses of youth, still shivering from delicious night, is beautiful.A sunrise over the dark ruins of Syria, on hot dusted stones, tasting of lament…
|
1395 4 2
|
I looked away. Why embarrass the Ottawa woman? Why make her uncomfortable? The polite thing is to move on, forget about it. Stare at the sidewalk not yet wet but becoming wet. Be Canadian.
|
1268 5 5
|
We spend our days on the beach, working on our tans. My pale wife hides under a big floppy hat. The water is crystal clear.
|
1408 5 4
|
an EZ How to Guide in 50 simple steps
|
1661 13 3
|
As American as hotdogs and apple pie...
|
1108 6 5
|
“Tell me how sad they are.”
|
1769 5 2
|
You’re mad as a hatter she said. Eons, eras of epochal proportions go by before you call me. I said recalibrate your linear thinking, incubator baby. I whispered permutations of wonder, told her secrets only the sufis know. We ate French goat cheese lac
|
1534 7 4
|
|
1355 5 4
|
It was uncomfortable to realize people had agendas. That there could be invisible realities.
|
1199 5 5
|
Years later Polyphemus still remembers the wine-soaked taste of Odysseus’s men. The barley and garlic-flavored Greeks. Their flesh a fibrous, blood-hued hummus. Their crunched bones releasing sweet marrow.
|
1500 8 3
|
"She began singing The Police song, 'Roxanne' in a falsetto voice, just like Sting."
|
1378 6 4
|
His face was creased with sadness the first time in the room and he danced his tai chi like a young man half his age, and laughed, like headtrippers do, from the neck up.
|
1360 4 5
|
His daddy died in his sleep. Went to bed one might and never got up.
|
1446 17 2
|
You can tend to recognise the difference between a good and mediocre mind by observing how each reacts to a misfired original idea.The mediocre mind will praise the merely meretricious, but ignore the more interesting bad art. The higher mind will value the misfired…
|
1581 5 3
|
Wafting wisps of fondness twinkling
in time with fairy lights pointing out lawns in cities
|
1165 7 4
|
Near dusk today a car backfired on the street beneath my office window
|
1424 8 3
|
Every ten days, the Decadent Sisters assembled for dinner. Although raised together, they were each very different...
|
474 8 4
|
|
246 6 4
|
|
3550 11 4
|
Lately, while he is upon me, in that way that men are upon women, I imagine him a pornstar with only one clip available for replay. Like I am a loop of a video girl below, taking it, maybe calling out in Russian. When I feel rambunctious, I imagine him a
|
1767 6 4
|
Where truth is revealed
To all, transparency
In policy, including
The REAL reasons
We are at war.
|
1447 4 5
|
Paulette lived on the east side on Paulette Avenue. Mama dropped me off when we wanted to play Barbies. Her neighborhood was a little green lily pad in a swamp of blight and disrepair. A ghetto moat ringed around those three fancy blocks like a first line of defense,…
|
1314 6 4
|
just before my break,/ he came on the line,/ old and slow with computers now/ but wanting a discount/ he'd been told he qualified for.
|
2096 8 4
|
“Can I?” Lily asked.
I gave her a nod. She tore at the package with greedy fingers. As the paper fell away to reveal yet another self-help volume, Lily cocked her head in a gesture of confusion and curiosity. Following her gaze to the lipstick-red
|
1619 8 4
|
SPOT ON OUR LUNG We sense A stillborn dawn. A furtive, lurking gray, A sleight of dusk, eclipse, that follows Us. TITANIC'S LANTERNS Upon My rain-glazed panes Wet lights from neighbors glow Like lantern beams from shipwrecks…
|
1829 5 5
|
Ishpeming straddles Lake Superior to Marathon, reaches into the water, pulls out a clump of frozen hotdogs, breaks them apart one by one, rolls them between its fingers, heats them on the thigh of its corduroy pants, and throws them into the sky. Comets t
|
1422 5 5
|
I keep my love for you in me, /
like the egg of a worm,
|