She thinks she trusts this man; she wants to trust him. His face reminds her of a man who once took care of her on an airplane when she was a kid traveling by herself.

So, when Daddy grabbed that cock by the neck and threw him into the hole that he quick covered with dirt, I knew right then that men would play a subservient role in my life going forward.

i never much liked Elvis never did then never do now he was no Kris Kristofferson

Newhouse returned his gaze to his wet palm, which he lifted to his nose with suspicion, sniffed again and again, then struggled to move out from under the growing stream.

He wrote, wrote, wrote with the sharp eye of an eagle...

I spot another fat lady in another part of the store, and I slap her butt, too. She tells me I'm a bad boy.

After the funeral there was a luncheon in the church basement.

I was a six year old with no bike. Only the males in my familyhad that privilege. So one morning I got up very early, before the older siblings awoke, crept out the back porch door where Iknew there would be two bikes in the yard just waiting for me and my…

“Have you ever thought what stars are made of?” “No,” he said. The man nodded seriously. “I hadn’t either. Not until I met the Star Catcher. He told me all the stars in the universe are actually coins. Coins! Big coins. Small coins. Different colors

I knew her face but not her hair, at least not the right way up.

It went like this: We were at the river. It had been a long day. The sun set over the hill tops, now. Me and Danny sat by the edge with buckets of water full of small fish and some dead crab that we'd got from the market, earlier and looked out over the small waves the…

The heavyset blind woman came into the art opening without a dog or a cane.

They drifted for months, locked between the vast merciless blue and the withering sun. Their faces blistered and their minds bleached and weary. They conspired in the shadows, drew plans in the sawdust, they grew confident and…

He picked her out of the crowd at Club Mai, easy when you knew what to look for: long, dark hair, pretty Latina face, store-bought tits. This one wore a tight dress that showed off her legs, sculpted to perfection by God and a pair of four-inch stilettos.

Papa said he'd be in the stands watching: section H, 5th row, seat 35. During warmups, she had looked, during stretches, she had looked, but she had stopped looking right before the race."Don't worry about me," he had said. "Focus on the race," so when the man had said on…