742 8 9
|
I spend my time sitting on the back step—poison oak reddening my arm—under the eaves, waiting to escape.
|
1923 16 14
|
There are simply no more words around me quite full enough yet to sort of cancel outthese more than emptied ones. I'm sorry. There might be some forever fields left ofcrowded purple flowers if you look hard enough but no mountain's majestyto…
|
1714 9 9
|
I don't think dogs like to die with the pack.
The smell of them rotting brings trouble in the wild,
|
1589 19 15
|
|
1719 16 15
|
One by one I lost my desires.
|
1802 13 13
|
Talking about a Friend Over a Cup or Two of Coffee “Their first fight was over school lunches. Free school lunches. She taught Kindergarten in a public special ed center for emotionally disturbed children. The…
|
1621 16 15
|
You might as well be the man on the moon. Once touching your face was quotidian. When I tallied each day's pleasures, you, in this room or that, counted too much for me, I think. I stopped record keeping. I'm …
|
1937 23 13
|
|
1344 21 14
|
I don't believe in symbols
but there's a hole
in my living room window
in the shape of a bird
|
1613 26 14
|
After each piece cancelled the other
the generals folded up their checkerboards,
|
1547 21 14
|
|
1983 24 13
|
Later I take his hand, and I lead him up the stairs. I want to show him something, I say.
|
1838 15 14
|
I see those shoes and the status they confer, and I know what they cost.
|
924 14 15
|
the making by taking away
|
1703 16 15
|
lost in a taxi cab, 4:30 am
|
2040 18 13
|
Instead of julienning the fava beans you could, instead, slip your linen shirt off your pink shoulders and hang it on a tree branch like a white flag yelling “I don’t want to fight anymore, goddamit, this aftenoon is beautiful.”
|
1946 17 15
|
What you see us doing here is not so much, andall we are not being there isn't either. Our kissing mouths may not always be singing, but we are constantly praying for you, and for more rain or less rain, rivers as the situation warrants. Don't…
|
1303 18 15
|
When I first met Luther he was sitting on the sidewalk, his back pushed up against a vacant storefront wall, thumbing through the “help wanted” section of a few-days-old copy of our local paper and I was moved to offer him a couple of dollars for which he said,…
|
1810 19 15
|
Our sons do nothing but drink and roar
|
1657 16 13
|
|
1898 14 15
|
A crone dressed in black pours liquid from a bottle onto the egg. Whiskey. Gasp! The egg cooks before our eyes!
|
1695 17 15
|
Sometimes he made us punch pillows. "Harder!" the shrink would yell.
|
2266 17 14
|
my foreign mouth embarrassed the teachers. my jumbled words gave people sad faces. so wrong these words of mine. even the mentally retarded girl would not talk to me. just looking at my garbled mouth made her slap herself. and my writing. oh no. my writin
|
1627 16 15
|
The dancer was a little chubby, but I didn't mind. It gave her more to shake.
|
2087 16 13
|
Confused, I paused and locked eyes with the girl who’d just bounced it with the long, dark hair. “I just saw you with it.”
She stared back at me. “Do you see it in my hands now?”
|
2463 18 12
|
She looked up, blinked. Fuck are you? I shook my head. Nobody you’ll remember, I said.
|
1524 29 13
|
Cinnamon and smoke
infuse the days that shorten,
chill, accelerate.
|
1935 15 14
|
Yet it was another thing to grow to become indispensable to someone without whose infirmities the helper could not exist. People in general had started to call that helpless requiring “codependency,” but to Althea that word did no good,
|
1619 18 15
|
We're not here for idle chit-chat, or ESPN, or fish tacos.
|
1651 20 14
|
In the bearded sun, I see a golden goat.
|