Madam Mayweather heard the laughter stop and the copy of Jean-Pierre burst into smoke. Her silence was intense. Nobody in the auditorium knew what to expect. No one dared to say a single word.

When Elvis died, I felt so empty that I headed straight for Jimmy Choo's, but quietly, with the half-veil of my pillbox hat draped low over my face. I didn't want to draw attention to my vintage Dior mourning outfit, since I normally wear pants, even here. The voices…

Outside I see the daytime moon, and it is faint as a fingerprint. My cousins have up-turned the biggest rocks and removed all the Sow bugs. The land is damp and red, and the trees feel wet to the center.

Sophie didn't stop for lunch when she worked. She showed up first in the morning and worked through until the last package was delivered. She pedaled from building to building and walked quickly, at just shy…

My best friend and roommate Eliza woke up one morning with the sudden conviction that she had to become very fat, as soon as possible.

Jesus Freaks will go tat head... crowns of thorns for their noggins and so on. Christ had one too...

The trail wound through oak trees and climbed up a hill. The sun was high and hot whenever we came out from the cover of the trees. We stopped under a tree. “OK old man,” Leda said. She came to me and kissed me. Then she was unbuttoning my pants and kne

This violin of oneself, this rough strum of I, arc of wing over thick rib. This masturbatory chirping like the meat of God clenched in your teeth, an apostrophe giving aloneness possession over the inarticulate, a bridge between chords.

when women’s hair shrinks into tight curly balls and sits on top of their heads like scrunches of wool, blowing in the wind, hanging from the mouths of recently shot deer.

1. The ghost that photographs my wife and me has a peculiar sense of lighting. In this one, we are sitting at the kitchen table of our old apartment. The table is made of glass. There is nothing on the table except our elbows. She has lowered her head between her…

The first husband was young and lovely. He had a little nose and long fingers he used for things like planting begonias in my clay pot. I did not do flowers. So that was nice.

see the man

History is replete with brutally imaginative techniques of torture and execution, but I am the only death machine that doubles as a musical instrument.

A dark girl, quite poor, maybe three, maybe four, leaned on a statue of a horse and his man. (The rider rode him in place, but as if in a race.) Her dress needed patching, her heart needed smoothing. She'd tried to sell…

Newsome glared at the sleeping woman, slumped over the edge of the hard, metal table, her head settled comfortably into the crook of her arm. Over an hour she's been in that position, he thought. Despite the harshness of the room, the fluorescent lights,…