And there’s Jamie, standing on the cliff-edge, screwing up a piece of blue paper and throwing it into the sea.

    — Scarlett Thomas, from Bright Young Things

[His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for
Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it.] Six feet from his head to
his heels was all he needed.

    — Leo Tolstoy, from “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Your daughter’s face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things,

but God,
doesn’t she wear
the world well.

    — Warsan Shire, from “Ugly”

[I lost a glove
then lost the other.]
I’d no more forms
that could withhold
the snows, the storms,
the perishing cold.

    — Justin Quinn, from “A Glove”

The world turns
And turns again, and then the world decides.

    — Katharine Coles, from “Antimanifesto”

But under all the layers — a tiny green shoot sprouting — I’m growing from inside.

    — Wendy Orr, from Peeling the Onion