(COMPLETE) SHORTER STORIES (2010)
Richard Kostelanetz
When I picked up a pen devoid of ink, I immediately thought of all the single-sentence stories I'd never written.
Nothing reminds me more of the failure of our family than the striking of a grandfather clock that belonged to my father before my sister sold it to a neighbor.
The doctor with his stethoscope hears my two lungs talking to each other.
Every time I'm reminded that “my short-term memory is not as good as it used to be,” I'm reminded that my short-term memory is not as good as it used to be,
Suicidal twins shoot each other simultaneously.
To silently tell the world that her marriage was amiss, she put her wedding ring on a wrong finger.
She proceeded with confidence though everything in life except loving, about which she had not a clue.
Subway cars arrivingat their storage area in the middle of the night resemble prostitutes exhausted for too many customers.
Mysterious applause is a pleasant surprise;applausethat is expected affects me not at all.
An artist disinclined to travel, he could never made his art well-known anywhere else except home.
I went to my grave to dance on it.
I thought that the intimidatingintervieweracross the table from me was sitting down until he walked away.
The husband fell asleep in his wife's funeral.
When I was shaving a man's beard, I inadvertently cut off his ear, which was eaten by a stray dog who hasn't left me since.
Only after his marriage did he accept the hypothesis of Hell.
Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz appear in Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, Reader's Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Webster's Dictionary of American Authors, The HarperCollins Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature, NNDB.com, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, among other distinguished directories. Otherwise, he survives in New York, where he was born, unemployed and thus overworked.