How Not to Write Metaphors
December 30, 2004 Issue

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had
its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh
Master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking
alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.

She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook
latches that used to dangle from doors and would fly
up whenever you banged the door open again.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly
the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a
paper bag filled with vegetable soup.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a
sneeze.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black
dots in the center.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like
maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers
raced across the grassy field toward each other like
two freight trains, one having left York at 6:36 p.m.
travelling at 55 mph, the other from Peterborough at
4:19 p.m.at a speed of 35 mph.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period
after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two
hummingbirds who had also never met.

The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound
of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during
the storm scene in a play.

The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red
crayon.

Even in his last years, Grandpa had a mind like a
steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it
had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother Phil. But unlike
Phil, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get
from not eating for a while.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame
duck either, but real duck that was actually lame.
Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like
someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's
Not Butter."

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that
sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

It came down the stairs looking very much like
something no one had ever seen before.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended
one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamp post.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had
disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as
a rude shock, like tax at a formerly
tax-free shop.

The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an
oscillating electric fan set on medium.

It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing
kids around with their power tools.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and
he was room-temperature British beef.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98
missing legs.

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a
first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed
a band tightened.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you
accidentially staple it to the wall.

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