Soamy: A Short Story

glass window. We were drawing near the island then. What I felt was a --

The city always seemed to push the stars farther away from the world in the dead of night. Rain had begun to sprinkle downtown and it began to trickle across the top of the parked cars in the street. Vernon was sitting there silently listening to the drizzle outside that sounded like pebbles falling on a tin roof, still thinking about the dreams his been having. The Coffee Cup was like any other diner nestled between apartments and liquor stores. There was seven cut-up stools and behind them against the wall sat a cigarette machine and no smoking sign. The counter was worn from years of service. Two booths sat facing the storefront windows

“The Glass” by Sharon Olds is an autobiographical piece which outlined one of the most memorable events for the author as she witnessed her father dying of cancer. Although the poem is about her father, her father is placed as an auxiliary character to the glass that he continuously spits up his phlegm and mucus into. The contents of the glass are described in gruesome detail while her father is slowly withering away beside it quietly. The author had a tumultuous relationship with her father as he had abused her as a child and she even has an entire collection dedicated to her feelings towards him, aptly titled The Father. The titular glass's function in Sharon Olds' poem "The Glass" is to replace the author's dying father as the new center of the universe because the glass now contains the father's life, thus shedding the once godlike image in the author's life.

A wall of glass separated Stella, Mark, and I, which explained the visual effects. It didn’t seem to be much of a problem. Stella was banging on the glass and pointing on the floor. I searched the ground for whatever she was pointing at. A glass vial, a shovel, a Roman-era axe (how was that there?).

It will take that much time before you can get past what she went through and come to see the perfection of her sentences” (Grealy 235). After reading Lucy’s memoir from cover to cover, I could not agree more. The writing is concise, and each sentence is intricately woven with the next, sounding almost poetic. It is even more impressive how Lucy can communicate a considerable amount of meaning through only a few words. A part that deserves special recognition is one at the end of the memoir. “I wanted to tell the man I was with about it, but he was involved in his own thoughts and I did not want to interrupt him, so instead I looked with curiosity at the window behind him, its night-silvered glass reflecting the entire café, to see if I could, now, recognize myself.” The “night-silvered glass” is a metaphor for Lucy’s self-reflection as she comes to terms with who she is. Not only is this brilliant sentence powerful within itself but it also provides the reader with a feeling of closure and

The thundering sound of hooves echoes in my ears as my horse comes barreling down the hill toward me. My whistle had caused him to go crashing through the tall grass and Queen Ann’s Lace in search of me once again. Coming to a sliding stop in front of me, I gently stroke his muzzle. Letting my hands glide over his fuzzy neck and into his jet black mane, I grab ahold and throw myself onto his strong back. We go running through the pasture, scattering wild rabbits and sending sparrows a flight. I watch them fly overhead, their brown wings leading them to rest in the big oak tree that my horse and I come to a halt underneath.

The next interesting item that the kids find is a very expensive paperweight. While discussing it, Miss Moore is sure to convey that while the object is very expensive, it’s purpose is very trivial. “”This here costs $480 dollars,” say Rosie Giraffe. So we pile up all over her to see what she pointing out. My eyes tell me it’s a chunk of glass cracked with something heavy, and different-color inks dripped into the splits,

Leaving off from where I last left off, noon was fast approaching. By then the town had nearly turned pitch black thanks to its gallery of unlit houses. The darkness somewhat contributed to a tranquil sense of complete nothingness. But on a lighter, less spiritual note lets focus on the plight of a commissioned streetlamp. This heritage lamp post, though not a rarity in Northbrook, was responsible for illuminating the town’s most noteworthy block. Industrial magnets, rags-to-riches lawyers and bankers, etc... a cast of people that one might expect to be somewhere on a communist poster next to the words enemy or capitalist baffoon, take your pick. Mustn't get off topic so often, doesn’t help the plot in any way. Anyhow lets return to the adventures of a certain beloved streetlamp.

A. One time I was showing in a horse show st Columbus, Ohio it was congress. While I was showing my horse Sonny he ran down to a stop a hit the ground really hard and I about fell off so I grabbed the horn. The ground at congress is not very good, it is really deep and heavy. I hate grabbing the horn because it does not look good and it makes you look like you cannot ride. When he hit the ground real hard I lost my stirrup while he checked the ground. When he got back in the ground he hit it even harder and thats when I grabbed the horn.

In the short story “Portrait of a Girl in Glass” we see that Laura “made no positive motion toward the world but stood at the edge of the water… with feet that anticipated too much cold to move” (Williams 110). On this edge, she created her own little world. Some like to live in an illusion of what they want or wish they had, while others prefer to stay in their state of misery and allow it to consume them. As it becomes familiar they start to be numb to anything until they start to be pulled out of it, though they will resist anyone who tries. Amanda Wingfield was the only person who tried on a daily basis to pull her daughter out of her lonely world. She did it out of love for her daughter, but the way Amanda went about doing it just seemed

Adjusting my midnight blue tie, I hurried down the sidewalk to St. John’s Baptist Church. Sunday morning, and I was barely awake, the thick fog blurring my vision. If you haven’t already guessed, I’m the enterprising young fellow that springs out of bed at five o’clock every weekend to ring the church bells, waking up my dead and dying little town. This Sunday was muggy as usual, the sun never showing up to greet me. Skipping up the cement steps, I took hold of the clammy oakwood door to let myself in.

In the text it states “I lay there feeling how warm she was and smelling her fragrance and I thought, I never heard of this before. I don’t know why she did that, but now when Daddy tells me that horses only know two things, the carrot and the stick, and not to fill my head with silly ideas about them, I just remember that mare (she had a star shaped like a triangle and a little snip down by her left nostril). We sold her for a nice piece of change within a month, and I wish I knew where she was.” This shows that the narrator disagrees with her father’s belief that we should sell the horses. In “Black Beauty: An Autobiography of a Horse” the author develops the character by expressing the narrator’s thoughts and giving description.

Their hostess, Mrs. Blackwood, had been absolutely delightful and accommodating if not a tad nosey. There would be mornings where the hoover had

This becomes evident when Antoinette recalls how her mother ? still planned and hoped-perhaps she had to hope every time she passed a looking glass.? Annette tries to recapture her former _prestige by riding her horse every morning, even after ? her riding clothes grew shabby?. Her horse and her riding clothes are status symbols that represented the wealth her family once had.

Another interesting thing about this image is the man inside the hourglass seems to be stuck within his own reality and is completely separated from the other people outside the hour glass. This image suggests that all people live in their own realities and only concern themselves with what is important to them. The old buildings and the cracked road imply that these people have been enclosed in their own realities for a long time. This image also suggests that people yet very in the aspects of race, gender, and ethnicity different has often acted alike in similar situations in life.