This is yours I believe. Don't hurt people. Don't harm animals. Plant something and pay it some attention, watch it grow, help. Lobotomized bombs growl out of fear. They are made for one awful thing. Some things don't need to be said. This is your…

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"...racing by like a many-headed serpent, the hydra of Greek mythology."

I drive by the cemetery....

like an angry river

She’s dancing in a summer field giddy with love of Orpheus when a goddamn viper bites her bare ankle. Why not a bee or even, forchristsake, a nasty yellowjacket? She’s instantly dead.

The corridor was longer than it had been, but that was only because I was walking it slowly. I had a key in my pocket. I knew this the way you know things in the morning before you are properly awake, not by checking but by a kind of trust, and I trusted it completely,…

As the family gathered for cocktail hour, my nephew asked me to bring him a virgin daquiri—and I answered that I could, but by the time I brought it to him, it would just be a daquiri.

two poems

Albert's alarm was on the verge of being dispelled by the cognac when another occurrence rattled him. In one of his vest pockets he located a short note addressed to him by Schrödinger. “—but no, this cannot be!”

count vb (late 14c) “to enumerate, assign numerals to successively and in order; repeat the numerals in order”; also “to reckon among, include,” from Old French conter “to count, add up,” also “tell a…

My heart raced. I couldn't swallow. Heat rose under my skin, sharp and disorienting. I wanted to disappear—to fold inward, to dissolve—but instead of leaving, I walked toward him.

You have to play the part and be somebody else at all cost, do this from the time you wake up drink your milk first contact, mom I wish I were someone else, tell me, tell me there must be a way through the center of the doughnut hole, direct opposite of a crucifiction.…

So greenThe road winded its way like a terrier tail but without wagging. Cream white snow and warty as country roads are with their noisy gravel which crackled under my schoolgirl shoes. I can still hear that noise when cars pass in front of my house, the tires…

Ah now, behold this bird. This silly little bird. Holding in his claw his piece of bread. His feathers white, his yellow comb. So proud to show his comb, designed to catch the eye of that other he's so attentive to. Though she indifferent…

1. The Doctor Sudan, 1936 The trap was sprung! The pair of would-be plunderers hung feet-over-head in a robust net of tightly woven rope, arms and legs entangled, alarm issuing like a Klaxon from…

Other therapists had their own names for it: death by mishap, inadvertent fatal impact, unintended loss of life. These were all very polite ways of describing what happens when one person, mistakenly and without malice, kills another.