| 1688  18  19   
 | Where we live, at the edge of the foothills at the east edge of town, fire is always a worry during the summer, and this has been an exceptionally dry year.  | 
		
		
			| 2573  28  18   
 | After my father moved in with his girlfriend, my mother sold the split-level and rented a two-bedroom in an apartment complex rife with divorced mothers and the under-employed. | 
		
		
			| 1981  35  16   
 | My heart beat someone up the stairwell. | 
		
		
			| 7031  18  17   
 | Why was the broom late for work?  | 
		
		
			| 1594  27  14   
 | Your writing offended the editors greatly, and we would select certain word choices we disliked, but we truly hated every word, including mere articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. | 
		
		
			| 440  15  17   
 | This is the best excerpt you'll ever read. | 
		
		
			| 1995  21  18   
 | Millie was a good woman, Bobby said.  A good Christian woman.  Well, I said, you can’t hold that against her.  | 
		
		
			| 1945  25  14   
 | Mama's good at finding things, but hardly ever what she's looking for. | 
		
		
			| 2012  17  18   
 | It's that quiet comfortable darkness. One should feel it often and necessarily.  | 
		
		
			| 2034  21  17   
 | There is a tall and leafy tree in our backyard. Also a bride, a groom, and a chicken. | 
		
		
			| 2410  22  15   
 | She leaned up on an elbow, smirked and touched his leg. “Want to do it?” | 
		
		
			| 2117  25  15   
 | Do you suppose you could make your female protagonist a salamander rather than a human?   | 
		
		
			| 2198  2  2   
 | At a good distance, he stood. Hair, gray, stringy, long as a horse’s mane. His beard, thick, unkempt. Like a caterpillar, a smile worked across his face. No, he said. It won’t be another Miami. Not another Miami. | 
		
		
			| 2500  20  13   
 | Her eyes grew wide, moist, catching the low light, holding onto it as if an imprisoned lover. "So you come home." I smiled. Was she playing a game? | 
		
		
			| 3222  32  14   
 | She turned and looked at me as if she had just discovered me. A weak smile looped around the edges of her mouth but she didn't mean it. It was as if her brain had relayed a signal to her mouth to smile but the mouth didn't really want to, not really. | 
		
		
			| 2274  21  13   
 | This is my house.  You park in the back.
                                *
This is a picture of flowers and hands. | 
		
		
			| 2250  19  12   
 | Say the word and I shall become
a photograph; | 
		
		
			| 1898  18  17   
 | "It's time to move the chair..." | 
		
		
			| 2753  30  15   
 | We met because I hate the actor Bruce Willis. | 
		
		
			| 1949  17  12   
 | The Gothic-filigreed gate creaks as a guard closes it behind the   little girl in the ruffled dress. Standing there in the morning fog, on   the sidewalk outside the reform school, she looks remarkably like   Shirley Temple. Dimpled, chubby face. Pretty, party dress. Her… | 
		
		
			| 1757  24  14   
 | Our lives depend on/
engineers | 
		
		
			| 4687  19  12   
 | It was a sore molar that was giving me trouble, on the bottom right. The dentist, about whose adulterous affairs everybody in the neighborhood knew and whispered about, ts-ts-ts'ed me and murmured "decay" before pulling out the drill. | 
		
		
			| 4086  2  1   
 | Romper Room with Beer
We go out for a thin New York Pizza at Lanesplitter’s over on Telegraph and watch the drunks staggering out of the bar across the street to have a smoke on the sidewalk, since you can’t smoke inside bars anymore. They ga | 
		
		
			| 2374  26  17   
 | I would see her at the gym in the mornings. | 
		
		
			| 1996  26  16   
 | So, we are all healthy but suffering financially, not equally so, and the tendency to suffer financially has been caused by humbling ourselves to particular men. We take a quiz in moral values, phrased as a party game. | 
		
		
			| 1710  18  14   
 | it corrupts the smells//
and flavors of the world/
and plants its swollen face | 
		
		
			| 6575  32  13   
 |             He  entered the kitchen, carrying the silver metal scuttle filled with coal. The  draught brought in the scent of woodbines. She paused her work, her hands resting inside  the bread dough, and breathed deep, having… | 
		
		
			| 68891  21  16   
 | "Hey, Ceecee."    Rodrigo squatted on our three step  stoop every morning, flanked by pit bulls with wide black smiles puffing steam.  I jogged down the steps, leaned against a parking sign. Warmed my hands with my  breath. Tugged my crop top down.     "Girl, you gonna… | 
		
		
			| 1478  17  17   
 | Something about shadows and last time and driving. | 
		
		
			| 1561  18  17   
 | Johan was telling stories about the occupation. The Germans were stupid, he said.  |