On stage, students from the junior college join children from the community to speak and sing in American-French accents. They are timid, heart-broken, in love, rebellious, faithful, resigned to their fates—and all in the matter of a few short hours.

What purpose other than misery/ can cancer serve? And Parkinson's,/ AIDS, and STDs?

And then, and then, and then! After all that, this. After all that bullshit with her Dad, the Associate Principal, the idiotic counselor, and that psychotic police officer, after all that, this: a dead black cat. Blocking her path! Right in the middle of the street! …

It would be great if next door to every restaurant, there was a 24 hour dental surgery. Then you could sneak in and grab a few magazines to read if you’re unfortunate enough to be dining alone.

Ok, so I’m sitting here trying to write through a frigging cold. And I. . .Oops, . . . . . . wait a sec!. . . I’m stopped, astounded, stunned between coughing my left lung clear over my keyboard and watching it flopping on the back of my desk. . .

Her ghost/kept coming back/to Hamlet

and dreamed itself infinite.

I do so want to bring you into the sacred linguistically eternal loop of all ordinary things on earth, but it can so easily turn into a very sudden unsparing trapdoor, or a hissing angry knot tying up itself into even more tricky sorts …

Lean closer, she smiles, smell my perfume let yourself be taken to a wild forest where owls grow and trees fly.

At any moment, she'll come outside to pick up the day’s newspaper. He can see it resting beneath the blooming crape myrtle, its plastic wrapper glistening with dew.

The closed door swallowed up both voices, and all I could make out afterward were muffled pleas and angry answers that died completely.

The Americans don't want us. They want knowledge. They want to eat with us. They want technology and weapons. They want the results of research they themselves are too craven to perform, answers to questions they ask themselves in whispers, in the dark. T

Residual flashbacks; just tiny bright lightning bolts that flash in front of my eyes, just like standing watching a soaring bonfire on a cold and frosty November night, pinprick sparks flying up into the endless darkness of the night.

“Let’s see that great big telescope of yours,” she exhaled hotly, “I want to grind your lenses!” The doctoral candidate dutifully stood between her and his massive telescope so her hands would encounter some instrumentation with no optical components.

One day we went for a hike. We climbed a small mountain. It’s called Mission Peak. We got about halfway up a steep trail, decided that was far enough. We embraced. She said “I love you,” and I said, “I love you, too.”