Chairman Mao came into town at the insistence of his family. He was not happy. His mother, whom he had loved far more for every difference from his father, did not look well. Chairman Mao, accustomed to finding his mother pleasant to look at, did not want to see her.
"YOU have abandoned your father!" cried his relatives.
"And my father abandoned me well before" said the man who remembered his father's cruelties all too well. Who were these people to remind him of the past. He loved his mother and he doted on her.
He despised his father. He...
The corner. The only thing I've ever known since my childhood, is that goddamn corner. The corner of my suffering, the corner of my abuse. The corner where I would listen to my parents fight for hours on end. That dreaded corner. I'm Connor, aged 22, from Springville, Oklahoma. I've been stuck in my adoptive parents' home for thirteen years now.
My parents were murdered when I was nine, so family friends adopted me. It was nice at first, until they introduced me to that corner. The corner that took away my friends. The corner that took my freedom. The...
When I was in Beijing, my dear, I saw a small lass with an ape of a face crouched in an alley and weeping for who knows who. I noticed she was wearing the cheap red cape I bought for you in H&M. When I was in Istanbul I saw a knock-kneed street performer whose laugh was the same as yours. Some graffiti that I ran across somewhere on the east edges of Paris resembled your handwriting, when you scrawled notes left for me coming home legless and too late. I say this not to make you think there are...
Let me tell you a story or a hero named Sam. He was quite a character, as he worked as an Ambulance driver. His goal had been to be a doctor, but his villain of a college professor had failed him, and squashed that dream. He had hitched a ride from a paramedic one day, and he had gotten a job as the man's assistant. Since he had the credentials, Sam was already qualified to become a paramedic. He enjoyed the job, knowing that he could be vital to saving another person's life, and that was alright for him. But...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. Off, yes. around, yes. But on, absolutely not. No matter how many times he flipped the switch, no matter how many times he prodded it, shook it, swung it over his head, he could not get it to turn on. He decided to coax it. First he offered it things that humans like: chocolate, love and affection, sex. The lamp did not budge. Then he offered it things that his cat liked: mackerel, catnip, a laser. Nothing. He tried reasoning with it, but the lamp was dead to his entreaties. Look, he explained, you staying...
i could be someone else,
a beauty queen,
a famous singer,
I could be an artist,
painting mountains and seasides,
making millions.
i could be a tv producer,
sitting in a beach chair and yelling at cast and crew.
But i choose to just be me.
I'm not a beauty queen,
an artistic genius,
or a tv producer.
but i'm unique.
there's no one else who can see through my eyes,
No one has walked two moons in my sneakers,
and that's the way i like it.
my mind is uncharted territory, my soul has never been explored. i'm a...
They had only met a through days ago through the happy coincidence that they were staying at the same hotel on the same island at the same time. They had met at a bar, neither their friends back home would be surprised by that fact, and had become fast friends.
Gloria was twenty-one, a full time secretary who was travelling alone, just needing to escape the soap opera of a life she had back home.
Mallory was a second year student, on holiday with her mother, step-father and three much younger half-siblings. She had been relieved to find a kindred...
They were the best of friends, but the worst of enemies. My husband and his brother would become like tigers fighting for turf or for female companionship. And they would never stop. I liked it when we first met because, of course, my husband, then my roommate's friend, fought for the right to sit beside me at the dinner table, to talk to me, and would find all sorts of ways to stop his brother from any contact.
He didn't have to do that. I didn't like his brother much. They looked exactly alike, although there were 10 months between...
My heart sank. The sound of a leaf crunched behind me. I turn my neck in fear. There I see it. My demise. Lurking in the shadows of Shayne Park. Drool bungee jumps out of its vicious mouth as it snarls at me. I feel its heat breathing in my heart. Piercing eyes stare into my soul freezing me in my tracks. The tan-skinned coyote puffed its chest and readied itself for attack. Suddenly I hear a loud bang, followed quickly by a squeal. I look behind me and see the coyote on the flor
to My son before I die
Take me from this bed, your knuckled curtained hands the fear the dread, for I have none of that. Throw away the flowers, for I am not yet dead.
Take me out to lie again on the Earth
if there is any left
and let me paw the Earth like the Animal I am
here I lie, and She is warming to me.