“Honey, I’m taking a bath,” Craig said as I was leaving. “Can you get that stuff on the list?”
“Of course,” I said, grabbing the list from the table:
I thought I heard him shout “I love you” but couldn’t be sure over the running
The object was to jump in the pool, swim to the other side and avoid my girl friends floating like Jaws near the center of the pool. I needed to land in the water with enough room between me and their grasping arms that they couldn’t catch me before
At dawn the earth convulsed and the ocean roared toward the last city, the gnarled maze of scrub pine and ruined skyscrapers we had stalked since we escaped our fraudulent families. Those people we loved and loathed and barely knew at all. The men
That winter the mountains were unbelievable. We’d come back from Trader Joe’s on a tired gray day, having a tired gray argument, and I’d park and get out and there at the edge of the clouds were the mountains: filmed in blue fog, standing stark
The Help
The Sloan family from Ottery St Mary packed away their towels, chairs, balls, and kites. They collected their rubbish, bagged it up for the bin by the car park. Edward, the youngest, pointed at the sea. Everybody watched a man, dripping in
Somehow in the rush Omar had packed the hotel prayer mat in his luggage. In the taxi searching for something it turned up. Of course it needed to be returned.
— They will think you are Muslim carrying it, said Omar.
On leaving the patisserie at Thambrin
My daughter’s pediatrician has been arrested
for writing Oxycodone prescriptions
for her 24-year-old lover. She’s married
with two teenage kids, but that, of course,
isn’t the issue—the issue is the drugs
and young
The Chinese bar is full of fruit machines. So many people are playing the fruit machines. I sit at a table warming my hands with warm wine. A sex doll comes strutting towards me. Mind if I join, they say. Sorry I’m leaving, I say. They turn on the
I remember just the assumption
we might any night die going home:
late night A train from the party
where we drank one glass too many of red wine,
our silver shoes with the court-curved
heels too hard to run in,
I don’t normally leave a comment,
but I must insist on this exception:
your delicious poem was a hit
with my crew! I only made
a few small tweaks:
ingredient-wise, we like it a little less bland,
so I spiced it up with some adjectives
and
I
From where I wasn’t to now, it’s
the same damn river twice two times over and clear
enough for the rocks to recognize the color yellow and what
it means. If they wandered closer, we’d be friends.
Everything is water if you wait long enough.
II
From
My husband and I stumble upon houses frozen in time—
pink-tiled powder rooms, paneled walls, and mod
basement bars mirrored as if Hugh Hefner were expected.
In one bright orange and green kitchen, all that is missing
is the big sunflower smiley-face
What one likes:
an objective, a bullseye, you, an enemy (occasionally) and that one.
Understanding, comprehension, agreement or consent:
objects that have a subordinate or derivate role relative to another.
A child, an adult, a master, a Viscount,
Forcing need where none existed before, it repeats the trick again
and again, investing and reinvesting in itself, building, redefining and
widening markets, and, in a power lock appalling to some and making
others giddy with glee,
I don’t actually want to figure out photons. We have named the thing that was confusing us, and that can be enough. Light is both particle and wave; love is both glory and pain. Keats could have been a physicist — he had the right temperament.
The golden pothos was left in the front of the chapel when my father’s casket was loaded and taken away. They took the wreaths of wilting yellow roses and Assorted Seasonal arrangements. They took the floral foam crosses weighed down with ball chrysanthemums
As the road fell into disrepair – crumbling at the edges, and then sinking and buckling and cracking up – the trees crowded in for a look. One of them must have taken a step forward, maybe just half an inch, and the rest followed. When trees got
What once was apprehended in passion survives as opinion.
—“Hammer” by Frank Bidart
Eager for learning, hopeful for a chance
to make something of himself again
in school, Richard shook my hand
and sat beside my desk in the office
the prison provided