Sky

The sky in the west
looked like the white
of a bloodshot eye.
-- Stephen King, "Bag of Bones"

Semblance

As he saw it,
civility would restore good feeling,
and the semblance of love
would be enough

to get by on
until love itself could be rediscovered.
And if there was never anything

more than semblance --
well, that would have to do.
He could manage with that.

--Alice Munro, "Silence"
(New Yorker, June 14&21, 2004)

Violence

Bloodstain
on chest
like map
of violent
new continent.
-- Alan Moore, "Watchmen"

Faces

It's funny, but certain faces
seem to go in and out of style.

You look at old photographs
and everybody has a certain look
to them, almost as if they're related.

Look at pictures from ten years later
and you can see that there's a new kind
of face starting to predominate,
and that the old faces are fading away
and vanishing, never to be seen again.

-- Alan Moore, "Watchmen"

Family

One day
you will do things
for me that you hate.
That is what it means
to be a family.
-- Jonathan Safran Foer, "Everything Is Illuminated"

Home

They say
you know
Georgia
when you
come to it,
for it's nothing
but red dirt
and rough roads.
-- Charles Frazier, "Cold Mountain"

Grief

That was the curse
of being a dummy.
You were always
being surprised
by grief,
because you
could never remember
the important things.
-- Richard Bachman, "Blaze"

Pale

A fat man lay
wrapped in a white sheet
in a recessed berth,
looking as pale
and flabby as a maggot.
-- Michael Swanwick, "The Scarecrow's Boy"
(Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2008)

Drive

Untrimmed thorns
and sapling limbs
clutch at the car
with intermittent shrieks
that embarrass you.
-- Wells Tower, "Leopard"
(New Yorker, 11-10-08 issue)

Mad

Crouching
like an assassin,
she delivered
calculated,
scalding,
phosphorescent
anger.
-- Robert Stone, "Bay of Souls"