Once a friend asked me to write about rape in an email, so I wrote that it is a weapon of war that would not work here because partners do not give in to it; in fact, they would say it is infidelity in relationships.

Our painter man was killed by a bunch of snotty kids who were making fun of him. A gun went off. What is a noodle to do? He wasn't sitting alone in his world, anymore. Where was his famous straw hat? His trusty pipe? He desperately needed to smoke…

“Can I?” Lily asked. I gave her a nod. She tore at the package with greedy fingers. As the paper fell away to reveal yet another self-help volume, Lily cocked her head in a gesture of confusion and curiosity. Following her gaze to the lipstick-red

Didn't usually go to the parade because it was long and cold But only a few blocks from the apartment Maybe if the sun had warmed all up some

First he wrote it in wet cement at the intersection: “Tad Loves Kimberley,” with a big heart around it. He was real proud, you could see. But then later on that year, the graffiti began appearing everywhere, on all the store walls: “Kimberle

I’d met this crowd of drunken poets from San Francisco Even though this was smack dab in the middle of winter Smack dab in the middle of the flattened Illinois plains Why they all left San Francisco I’ll never completely understand But there we we

You just watch, the schoolteachers’ll be next and then you’ll see shit go down. Imagine what happens when a fifth-grader sees his teacher getting frog-marched through a crowd on YouTube.

It’s just a joke, give them a poke, electric jigger in the hand

Ted did not understand turn-of-the-century costume dramas, and because he didn’t understand them, he often referred to them as "chick flicks" or "English crap." Even when the principals were not British. Even when the principals were Winona Ryder.

His mouth is a flesh cave where a grizzly slumbers and winter is the blank page of my face.

Morning sounds

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Cleaning the dust bunnies from under our lives, Zin says she wants to move to the country, maybe someplace as big as Texas. She claims that lately she's having trouble breathing between bricks or talking to hot chestnut vendors with rubber faces. It's giving her nightmares…

Because I was not sure if the poet had said yearn or urine, I zoomed in on her mouth as she commanded the lectern...

It’s funny how white people are so reluctant to reveal their ignorance of hip-hop culture. “There are a number of robust on-line tools that can assign randomly-generated rap nicknames to members of the federal judiciary,” I told him.