Header salutation: “Hi”? “Dear Sir”? “To Whom It May Concern”? note: consider sympathy cards suggestion: blank or simple addendum: no Bible quote!! Opening beg for sympathy? suggestion for opening: avoid certainty – a sure approach might suggest previous drafts or other experience at subject, thus …
There was muck everywhere. Clogging up the shallow trenches of my fingertips, in the threads of my red thermos. Charlie had it on him too. “Grab the hose,” he said. I starting walking around the side yard. “No, hey, its under there, under the deck.” …
Our dog barn looked like a battlefield after Figgy busted the Coke bottles. He’d done it after the pigeon colonel chewed him out for not keeping the cages clean. Colonels aren’t supposed to chew you out. They’re supposed to have better things to do. But …
In this white space, a dot (a red dot, yes [red not like blood {still a horror, to be sure!}, but red like cherry candy, really {dare I invoke Lifesavers and irony (quell, quell–easy, easy–there is time to be taken, a start to be made, …
The virtue of hope, in Enoch, was made of two parts suspicion and one part lust…He wanted, some day, to see a line of people waiting to shake his hand. – Flannery O’Connor, “Enoch and the Gorilla” Until this morning, my story was the same …
The winding road stretched far ahead of him. That was what he wanted. The road ahead, yielding to each stride as had the road behind. In the moment of concentration to breathe, to perspire, to strain, without truly straining, to live with the rhythm of …
He takes me by the arm like a child out of fire-drill formation and kisses me. Another student walks in. “I forgot my lucky pen,” she tells the emptied room. With his back to us, he packs his briefcase. “We’ll go over that material another …
Foggy mornings trainees grew like mushrooms in the company street. They had been regular folks, but now were regular army. They had dreamed irregularly before being drafted, dreamed now regularly of survival in the jungle. The sergeant referred rarely to their individuality and if he …
I held her hand and led her toward the beach, our way along the path through the rushes lit only by the moon, our soft canvas shoes sinking into the deep sand. When we emerged from the tall grass, I stopped to get my bearings. …
You, my uncurled companion, dream me a story while your body runs rings around mine. Don’t give me a bleak view of the moon. I am not immune to the wind. Nor are the iced highways east and west of here. Bring me a stone …