5.06 / June 2010

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_6/adcox.mp3″ text=”listen to an excerpt from this story” dl=”0″] There are of course, girls and girls; yet at heart they are pretty much alike. For man, the over-grown boy, life has commonly two, and only two, sides: work, and play.

I was eating patty melts with little Jilly at the House of Pies when I first read about the homicide in Hutto. Somebody’d left their Statesman next to my juice glass, and I saw the word found from the corner of my eye, then dead.

Got a call from a young woman who knew of an old neighbor on her street who could use some adult diapers. “Is there any way,” she said, “you could arrange to get her some?” I said, “Sure we can get her some adult diapers.” I didn’t know about adult diapers.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_6/dyer1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] We traded aortas under the Ballerina Magnolia that had already bloomed and wilted and dropped its petals to our feet. You called for 5-0 surgical silk to stitch the artery in its place: Don’t forget the gauze. Don’t leave the gauze in my chest.

Last Friday I invited friends over for drinks at my duplex. I didn’t do anything fancy—just threw together a plate of Gouda, Wheat Thins, and store-bought tapenade. I put on the Temptations and poured myself a big cold glass of Pinot Grigio.

1. Vermilion Flycatchers They drank Long Island Iced Teas lounging by their flaming fireplace. She watched the rain pouring down outside the window. A flock of birds swooped across the blooming apple trees, taking cover beneath their porch. The birds chattered and blushed. 2.

I. BEAT I walk in on my heart in bed with someone else’s heart. The vital organs pulse, over a hundred beats per minute. The white sheets beneath them are soaked in a dark red splotch, as if they’re both menstruating.

Somewhere, a couple celebrated an anniversary, laid out a blanket beneath a chandelier of willow tree, pressed into each other so carefully not even the fallen leaves broke open.

I’m taking inventory in the walk-in freezer, have my hat and gloves on and am counting packages of sandwich buns, when one of my employees barrels through the door to tell me Mr. Chicken is back.   She shivers in her green Golden Lotus blouse, grabs my elbow, drags me from the freezer.

My dog’s ribs knock against each other like tin cans, and she runs loud clanky z’s through the field.   I hit the dewberry bushes with my fishing pole because cottonmouths like to hide beneath them in dark places so warm and sweet.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_6/parker1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] From the defoliated fixed point in the ex-forest, Mr. Zero stares into the vanishing point. At the vanishing point, no one stares back at portly Mr. Zero. There is no shot / reverse shot except as you pan across the scene in these restless words.

At first it was nothing.   Then it fell harder, and they had to slow down.   Cory had never liked snow, even from inside a warm place.   As a child she thought it sucked color from the world, a comment that made her family laugh.

Samuel was frustrated by the limits of language—its inability to fully express his profound thoughts regarding his feelings and desires. He felt imprisoned by the tongue given him, and restrained by the speech of his people. No words could adequately describe all that went on in his passionate mind. A rock fell on Samuel.

This happens: I am sitting in the basement of the old house in Tacoma, in the leather chair my mother will make my father sell the summer we move to the house in the valley. I am trying to make sense of the huge metal computer on the desk.

Would love to look like that for you. A stroke against my favor is that you deem me so inappropriate. Especially after drugs or sex my lips redden and puff. You can always tell from the lips and the empty saucer eyes in either case. If the cheeks are flushed then so much the better.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_6/thomas.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Charlie had a wart on the bottom of his foot, brown and textured like dirt stuck to sap.

Facebook friends are like dirty socks at the laundry — For each friend I add, two go missing inside the empty machine I search. Arts & Leisure We held hands through all of Rocco and his Brothers. Now, we’re divorced. When the brutal brother Simone raped Nadia, you covered your eyes with my hand.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_6/revelation.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Because we were boys, I could only touch you in the dark. Where we pretended the sins promised by our fathers could not find us.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/5_6/motion.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] The daughter has been willing herself into a collision since thirteen. The daily preparation of this task has diminished her social ability. She tends to think only of motion, of the way the body loses itself to force, the way bones will only bear so much pressure.

Let’s make each other cry Let’s take a weekend to do it Clear your schedule we can stay up all night I will collect your hair with my mouth Use the strands to sew the slices in my heart We can try to fix before we break Blood on the floor then on the pillows