Jacabo gave the boy a can of beer with oxycontin and rat poison in it. He instructed the boy to drink and talk. Jacabo did this, fully aware that making ghosts was a costly enterprise.

Justin comes out of the bathroom, finally erect, his hands glistening with K-Y jelly as he chucks the girlie mag into a corner. “I'm ready.” Through the afternoon's soft-filtered light, Kelly watches him climb on top of her and thinks of…

Matthias Fenstermacher loved onions, but hated slicing them, and so he labored to produce a tearless variety. His first attempt was indeed tearless--instead of weeping, the slicer was overcome by fits of uncontrollable giggles. The potential hazard was

So, I escaped from the Iron Curtain out of Czechoslovakia, as was called then. That was in 1956 I escaped, and came to Chicago where all of you were for some time already. I know our grandparents came over in early part of century, but my part of family

The question posed a voluptuous riddle. Were these frenzied silhouettes gestures of Jackson Pollock’s dribble?

If you find a nickel-plated Colt .38 lying on top of a worn copy of King Lear, you’ll know who you’re dealing with.

Is every librarian a poet at heart? I don't know, but a group of librarians recently put their heads together and came up with these library-themed Valentine's Day poems: Roses are red Your book's overdue You've had it for months Which is…

He drifted for years: No forwarding. No phone.

She asks if I only write about men, which I tell her is redundant. I also answer, “Yes, but sometimes I write about them as race cars, hyenas, vaginas, or God.” She smirks like she wants to smile, but it’s stuck halfway out her door. Her happiness has

By the end of the evening, a dark circle of sweat stained the overstretched satin over her dome of a belly. José told her to take it easy. “When people come to a tango bar, they want to think about sex, not babies.”

Mostly, though, reiteration of the old/ in an idiosyncrasy that strives/ to become fresh and fails

We both lost our appetites, her sense of taste destroyed by the tide of smoke sweeping across her tongue, wiping out her taste buds. Mine was limited to the four tastes the tongue alone could discern,

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

Simon never looked ethereal. I’d expect someone who grew up seeing ghosts to dress in black every day. I’d expect him to be gaunt and to chain-smoke foreign cigarettes, Gauloises maybe. The kind wrapped in black paper. Strong. Two puffs and you’ve got thr

This is a lady who never got a break.