Recently added articles from Confrontation:
Birth data.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... Welcome to the Fiction Department of the New York City Department of Health. If you are calling about the West Nile virus, press one. If you are calling about rodents, press two. If you are a mobile food vendor, press three. If you are calling ...
Art in America.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... There had been four letters from Paris, not counting the printed invitation to the vernissage at Galeries Benac and the American-style wedding announcement. In those four the handwriting looked like water birds--thin and stretched forward with flighty loops of 1's and k's and swooping dips ...
Boredom, or, the yellow trousers.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... Thackeray bought the trousers on the merest of impulses. He hadn't supposed--up to the moment he spotted the other Westerner through the windscreen of his rented Chevy Caprice, fifty yards down the road and crossing to his parked car--that he was in need of another pair of trousers. But ...
Biology.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... A man wants a woman he can make love with every night. But a woman needs a man to hold her, ever-so-gently, all day long. And that is the paradox of marriage. So when I say "Wait a minute," he flings himself from me and buried his head in his arms. We are in bed, upstairs in a ...
Good Samaritans.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... 1 On the day of the tragedy, I went into a church and tried to pray. Having been raised without religion, I found myself unable to summon the necessary feeling, or at the very least to channel it in that direction. In the weeks following, I was also moved, ...
Evolution.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... There's an ongoing debate in Ann Landers about which is more painful--having your husband divorce you, or having him die. Lori's been following the letters in the library's newspaper, and she's glad to see that today's column has two more. She has twenty minutes to relax while the kids are ...
Cheer for the laundry.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... Many years later ... You should know this: I am vain and vulgar. My wandering eye gives kids the heebie-jeebies. When I can't sleep, I crack walnuts with my fist, stomp them with the heel of my boot. Broken pieces turn up in odd places; like ...
Tell me about your brother.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... 1 The last demo job Ike pulled landed him in crutches. (1) It wasn't the explosion itself, or the shockwave that followed--admittedly, a small one--but the getaway. Sirens clanged at him from all directions, echoing and bouncing strangely through the chutes and channels formed ...
Diving.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... In high school, my sister Heather was a state champion diver. During her junior and senior years she woke at four-thirty in the morning and drove to the pool for diving practice until seven, then drove back home to get ready for school. After school, she practiced with her coach for ...
Broken story.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... 1 How she woke in the night with the knowledge on her, crying, 'Something dreadful! Oh God, something dreadful!' Her hand reaching for the phone, listening to the clear and stubborn silence of her daughter's voice, 'I'm not a child, Mother, I am not a child,' the sound slipping ...
The spit.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... It was Rosie first called me the spit. She walked in our front door that first day, took a long look at me and grinned broadly. "Look now! If she ain't the spit a' Mig Fallon!" I bit a chunk of chocolate cookie. "Who? Me?" "'A course!" declared Rosie. The spit." ...
Unchain my heart.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... It was in her junior year of high school that Margo went wild. When she took to wearing purple eye shadow the color of love bruises. When she made out in nightclubs, in the back of cars, on friends' sofas. When, sometimes, in desperation, she and Wynn made out on the beach, the sand ...
Stitching.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... Sitting on the couch under a blue down comforter, I smoked a fat joint Johnson had rolled before he got dinner ready. He was cutting vegetables in the kitchen and every now and then he'd sashay his way over to me for a hit. "How you doin' darlin', he'd say in his country-western voice and ...
Scale.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... Twenty years of marriage, my husband got me a bathroom scale for my birthday. Was he trying to tell me something? He weighs a lot more than I do. I lifted the scale out of the box and turned it over and looked at it. I couldn't hide my feelings. I couldn't swallow the scale, it ...
Birthdays only last so long.(Stories)(Short story)
Sep 22, 2006; ... Who would have thought--Anna and Harry? Not far back there was only Harry. And there was her--Anna. And Fitz. All right, so there was a Fitz and Anna, and a Harry and Fitz, and well, you get the point. Fitz was the point. "There's a part of Fitz in all of us," Harry says, ...
Hank Manque.(Drama)(Play explanation)
Sep 22, 2006; ... <Pre> CHARACTERS Donald Grenci A man of twenty-four. Rebecca GrenciA woman of twenty-nine. Kenny JevremovA man of thirty-two. </Pre> SETTING A fleabag studio apartment deep in the heart of Hollywood. Not dirty, just ...
Blindsided.(Memoir)(Personal account)
Sep 22, 2006; ... After lunch on the Saturday before Thanksgiving I went out to throw a football around with Hal Shulman. Indian Summer warmth had broken a chill spell, and a haze hung in the air, casting a halo around the sun. My parents and sister had driven off to White Plains to go shopping, and I'd ...
Typology, Metropolitan.(Poems)(Poem)
Sep 22, 2006; ... <Pre> Typology, Metropolitan Nomad of seventeen, what losshas left you lying on the grassto win again at five-card draw?But you play no one but yourself,that's the problem! Your mind withdraws,shines like quicksilver and flares out,or severed--two ...
Half Leaf.(Poems)(Poem)
Sep 22, 2006; ... <Pre> Half Leaf Little Walter Whitmancrossing Brooklyn ferry,powered by the horsesspinning forth the capstan. Little pet of gamekeeps,trumpeted by deckhands,rides deadhead repeatedlytaking it all in. Little legal errand boy...
Cut.(Poems)(Poem)
Sep 22, 2006; ... <Pre> Cut the lack of bloodin her facewas what I noticed first then drops of iton the floor & thatshe was squeezingher finger on crutches myself my own wound still stitched I wouldn't drive for weeks& thus hoped hers ...