It started (or maybe ended) with the boot flying off the balcony and bouncing in the dead grass in front of our building.

Jerry tries to be funny saying, I think Charlie Brown should kick Lucy in the head when she pulls the ball away; either that or they start making out. Ewww, but they're both eight years old, Sandra says biting her lip, tying off her smile. Jerry won't focus on her…

I was at Mike's place when the call came. My brother sounded so accusing that I wanted to punch him in the face. But he was way upstate. "Dad died today," he said, as if I could have somehow known or prevented it. It was sudden. A heart attack. He was…

Her body: normal as a body, a baby’s body: skin and eyes.

In half-dreams she saw a pale alchemist kneeling before a stitched together abomination, witchcraft and science merged, mocking God’s fire.

Beneath their feet bedrock stretched a hundred miles

“Listen, Mother – you’re my ticket out of this burg and I’m not about to cash it in!”

I looked around in my pantry but there were no sentences I felt like cooking.

an oven mitt in Dachau

Five o’clock, and Madame choosing her evening legs. Elizabeth assisting. Elizabeth will continue to assist until midnight, despite the chaos, at which point the authorities will tell her such assistance is no longer necessary.

I tell my woman friend the new man's penis is too large. I tell her once. She asks me later whether I asked about it at the doctor's—large cock, she calls it, and I say I told the doctor my boyfriend's in a wheelchair.

No. No. No.

It’s that laugh of hers that gets me...

The Devil and the Holy Ghost played Euchre on Friday nights. The Devil drank rock and rye and the Holy Ghost went for Miller Lite. What just irks hell out of me, pardon my French, the Ghost began, is that nobody knows who the fuck I am.

I spent most of those days in my car. Stashed in the trunk was a cache of precious stones, neatly sorted and separated, bound in smooth black velvet inside a smooth black briefcase.