There's no sky like that with twisting clouds shot up into by cypress trees that are so like dark green flames leaping out of the earth as if a dark green oily pool were on fire underground, and this was all that could escape, was its essence.

He was ready for the rub. Tense. She could always tell. The legs, the shuffles. He had to be frantic before he would come to her, his own wife. Vanity, fright. She could read him like a book open on the table, turn his pages the way a fish flakes. "It's comfort night,…

You would think when a bowl hits a tree the sound would be fierce, a loud clatter as stoneware explodes on birch bark dispersing shards in daffodils and grape muscari, but the noise is gentle, a thudding clink like empty bourbon bottles rattling hollow in…

She'd sit out on the back deck and dig into the skin around her toenails with a paring knife until it bled. He'd listen to a single aria of Opera's Greatest Hits, number 10, until the cusp of some feeling, either despair or rage, would build and fade. Then he'd start…

The last chick in the nest

Carla woke up from her hospital bed screaming. "Somebody please help me. Please save me. I am begging you."

“What are you doing after this?” I asked, faking a self confidence I didn’t truly posses at fifteen. I didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t old enough for any of the clubs they’d go to. I’d heard that fans sometimes followed the band to an after-party.

When hadrons collide they’re not always Swiss. They may be cheese or neutral but that isn’t of my concern. Look at them, touch them, feel them, the quirks of the antiquarks, masonic mesons, baron baryon.

Gerald's law practice wasn't new. He'd worked on the law review and finished near the top of his class thirty years ago. After earning his J.D., he'd gotten a master of law in taxation. His favorite cases required researching legal precedents, and he…

It's because poetry would not do because the fireflies were alive that night, aflame

rockstar, moviestar, literary supernova – burning out before all the planets are declassified.

You thought you dated wild girls? They were tame compared to how I turned out. Ever hear of the Chicago motorcycle club called the Hell's ___? (Chicago's watered down version of the Hell's Angels, but we did party with some of them, and the Outlaws, onc

Okay, no freaking out. I mean, this isn't a suicide note. This is suicide fiction.

I am young. This is years before I start to hide my accent.

I was little, very little, when Happiness went away. I moved the entire earth, walked in the ferns, poked in the river. Happiness had disappeared. I looked to the sky. I remember, the sun had the porous face of an orange. Not unlike my skin. My eyes fixed above, I saw it…