I'll tell you a secret about storytelling. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty... were not perfect in the beginning. It's only a happy ending on the last page, right? If the princess had everything from the beginning, there wouldn't be a story. A...
They turned to Angel. "We will call you Little One," the leader said, obviously deciding to dispense with the whole confusing name thing. "Okay," said Angel agreeably. "I'll call you Guy in a White Lab Coat." He frowned. "That can be his Indian name,...
I’ll tell you what I don’t believe, Alwyn. I don’t believe there’s a pretty forest in the sky with castles and a white light and God and all his angels waiting to welcome all the good people in. And you and me standing there sick with nerves ...
She's shed her skins and plasma jeans, gets around in 2K retro gear like the frock she wears today; a loose, white elegy to what's been lost. Already she's flowing back into herself the way a river flows to fill a creek bed. But some hard layer has w...
New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, s...
The Classical Study (3) The Master has forgotten his hat. Without his hat he cannot fly. Without his hat his dreams escape up. Without his hat he cannot tip his hat to that woman passing by whom he remembers from somewhere, as in a dream, a room in a...
Biology textbooks tell you the opposite action of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. One produces cold, blue-white anger, the other flushed apoplexy. Roy's was the pink sort. He was a big blonde man, with Viking bristle to eyebrows and ...
Gloria watched the swollen white orb of a hot-air balloon rising over Navy Pier and knew she had to break it off with Oliver, for he was the type who would never enjoy hot-air balloons, Van Morrison songs, or mess, whether from orgasm or otherwise. B...
On a certain day in the blue-moon month of September Beneath a young plum tree, quietly I held her there, my quiet, pale beloved In my arms just like a graceful dream. And over us in the beautiful summer sky There was a cloud on which my gaze rested ...
The Whites have carried to these (colonial) people the worst that they could carry: the plagues of the world: materialism, fanaticism, alcoholism, and syphilis. Moreover, since what these people possessed on their own was superior to anything we coul...
My mother buys a handful of wishing beans, which just seem to be white, dry beans with no specific magickal import. She will parse these out over the months when she feels her family members most need a wish. She can believe in wishes, since it is th...
One day I said to them, Where is the God you worship? They said he was like Chukwu, that he was in the sky. I asked then, Who is the person that was killed, the person that hangs on the wood outside the mission? They said he was the son, but that the...
SUN, MOON, AND STARRY SKY Early summer evenings, when the first stars come out, the warm glow of sunset still stains the rim of the western sky. Sometimes, the moon is also visible, a pale white slice, while the sun tarries. Just think -- all the cel...
Colonel Sanders as played by Hot Daddy Harrison Ford, cracking the whip on some island plantation, topping every native boy, stopping only long enough to enjoy a refreshing Coca Cola. Because every white guy is a blonde, Aryan top. All of us are the ...
... the world can give you these glimpses as well as fairy tales can--the smell of rain, the dazzle of sun on white clapboard with the shadows of ferns and wash on the line, the wildness of a winter storm when in the house the flame of a candle doesn...
We ate away, reminiscing about our victories over the enemies from different streets and villages and competing with each other in casting curses. A few golden butterflies and dragonflies were fluttering around us. The afternoon air was warm and clea...
It’s just that you go so crazy being alone like that. Sometimes he’d forget my water or food and I’d cry and cry and cry.” She stops talking and looks out the window. “I would try to tell myself stories to pass the time. Fairy tales. Parts ...
I'm not good at having friends. I mean, I can make myself useful to people. I can fit in. I get invited to parties and I can sit at any table I want in the cafeteria. But actually trusting someone when they have nothing to gain from me just doesn't m...
She had dreams that shamed her in the morning, dreams where Ronan gave her a white powdered cake, yet spoke in Arin's voice. I made this for you, he said. Do you like it? The powder was so fine that she inhaled its sweetness, but always woke before s...
I keep thinking of as we fly along... the ocean is very blue. Sometimes we fly over white cloud banks that extend for miles and miles to the horizon. I hope one day to find and work toward God." And I never even knew what religion [Doug Bradlee] was,...
The actuality of us being cognizant and accepting of the fact we are but a speck of sand in a universe sized desert, whose existence is irrelevant to any facet of universal function is a hard pill to swallow. Knowing the world will go on for another ...
