After too much I had forgotten how to fly. There was a small owl with me on the old dirt road by the wind. It was a very dark gray, like an ash. Its beak moved, it opened and shut, opened and closed, but I had also forgotten the language

The cat wound itself around Megan’s neck, its purring curling through Megan’s consciousness. She was the cat and then herself, both things at once.

Yes, I can imagine it now/ how we could each disappear completely/ connected only through memory's fault lines/

Marlene smiles at me with her lips pressed together. The young girl standing with her can't be more than fourteen or fifteen although she is tall for her age. She too smiles. She has an intricate set of braces on her teeth. I can't tell if Marlene has teeth

When the sun saw what they was doin’, it slipped behind a sexy cloud and turned a blind eye.

When I was 17, they said in an e-mail that you would get too drunk to function and that you would abuse them, verbally, and do way more than embarrass them in public. They said you'd yell at them and hit their mom for any reason. They put a restraining order on you.…

It was never this warm down where I was born from an excess arm. Or maybe I was wanted. As an arm, I mean. I could have been shed defensively, though I don't know who would eat anything as spiny as my species. Of course I don't know what would eat me; I have not been…

Some people might find it strange and a bit obsessive to mow their lawn every day, but to Shiram it was an irreplaceable part of his daily existence.

Ours is but the very small effort being made here.But it's a good enough keeper for all of usto always remember off. All the tins thataren't really going to save usfrom starving, now are neatly arranged all around, justin case, stacked…

He ripped the black and white photograph of Robert Crumb from his cubicle. He put the photograph in his mouth. He chewed and chewed and chewed.

We need to keep writing because the great ones aren’t always that great We need to keep writing to insure that the future even has a future We need to keep writing because the wind won’t know how or when to listen if we don’t

Every single girl, from junior to senior (and a few counselors too, I suspected), wanted to make out with Marty Miller. Did he know how drunk with attraction I was?

“What took you so long?” she asks. She seldom asks me that when we’re done, but today I feel ready to protract the glory, to tease out its rise and fall like the lingering chords of a Debussy pastorale.

Cold smoke from the crater Breathes on our eyelashes; The abysmal emptiness held Its breath just once.

I am surprised that you’re not famous already. I remember sitting in your bedroom for hours just watching you while you wrote poetry. I was in awe of you, thinking you were going to be the next Dylan Thomas! Or Bob Dylan. Or Dylan Somebody! And I rememb