I noticed a tall man in front of me with a long umbrella hanging from his arm. He was watching the priest and listening. When we began the preparations for communion, the tall man threw himself onto his knees.
I never call ahead to say I'm in town and on the way over because the front door is always unlocked.
Look at those fucking crows, Mona said. She and Dan and I were sitting on our porch, drinking vodka tonics and staring at the view, which was pretty good with the sun going down and the corn in the field between our two houses almost ripe and ready to harvest.
It’s 2006, I’m nineteen, and I have a part-time job with my uncle engraving portraits into tombstones.
Every time I walk to the library
I pass my old friend’s house
who doesn’t live there,
or anywhere anymore.
He was riding down the street like you, contramano, and the image came of you on your bike, and I wished for the dream of the flying bicycle to return, the one where I find you again.
1.
Not long after my father died, my mother bought a brand-new bright-red Toyota Celica GT. She also started exercising regularly—a mile a day in the pool—and spent more time shopping for
My friend, she wants to win a man over with a story. “He loves to read,” she says, “and I want to impress him. Could you write me something?”
Once a year I decide
I don't love you. It's
today. Watch me
not make you breakfast.
The child is only
this flesh I grew
and you tore
out of me.
Now it stirs in the
I've seen my friend Taylor sleeping
mouth open sometimes, one time with a boner
Whenever I've awoken him, he has
acknowledged my presence immediately
and put his hand in the
When Sophie arrived home from the Strange Charm concert, she realized she was now in possession of an uncomfortable secret. The next day at work it replayed in her mind at least a hundred times.
To love is to understand
the tsunami--
that it's just a thing the sea does
when it's been too long
missing the
[Previously on... Part 7 | Part 6 | Part 5 | Part 4 | Part 3 | Part 2 | Part 1]
but that's all about to change. My murder ballads, well, they prefer to terrify. I want to talk more about titular heroes. About what it means to kiss a goose. I mean, kill a goose. I want to do
There’s hardly anywhere like Norton’s anymore, and no one like Norton. He sold phrases for special occasions out of a shop in Queens.
Chesterfield knocked with two eczematous knuckles—only a courtesy warning to let her know he was coming on in. This time he walked into a locked door.
A werewolf?
You know, I feel like it's a good possibility, officer, I really do.
Sarah squeezed into a bathroom stall with Ralph. Outside her boyfriend sat at the bar, nursing yet another domestic beer.
Hector was lucky and he knew it. And everyone else knew it too.
[Previously on... Part 4 :: Part 3 :: Part 2 :: Part 1]
Here's what happened. Lt' Pup' Got mental bombed by a cat. Boom. He had to fight for his life in his mind. Boom. And he won the battle.
everyone leaves the party
and I'm still at the party
I sleep on the floor some time later, leaving
a half-drunk Miller Lite within reach
there are mattresses
He wasn’t expecting how strong they’d be with their pale soft hands and their petticoats and their bowties and their cummerbunds. But when they stormed the ship, they threw aside lacy parasols and let fall monoculars.
