fate is an illusion we use to ease the terror of our mortality

Frowning, loosening a purple tie, Tony pushed through the golden revolving doors of a skyscraper. He drifted into the crowded midtown street as if in a daze. He was roused to his senses as his cell phone sent out the melody of his wedding song.

I remember thinking the seasons are arriving later every year, as if the world has been slowed by the weight of graves.

Her mouth was sour; her forehead was still damp with perspiration. She leaned against the bathroom wall and noted her complexion had gone pale. She wanted to slide down the wall and rest until she felt steadier, but…

A blonde girl, her youth evident beneath a cosmetic mask of bruised eye shadow and plum lipstick, claims the seat beside me on a train. A radiant six month-old gazes out from her hip, awe-struck at life, as my own son must have been at that age. I never e

Both his parents saved their pent up Puritan pasts to fill his ears with brimstone clichés. "Idle time is the devil's playground", he would tell me, scrunching up his face, stuffing it full of meat lovers pizza.

Sitting near her desk, like a dunce cap, red

A cult is one thing; it defies common sense that a commonly educated person cannot escape cultist thinking and belonging. That cult, A.A., is girded by police, fire, therapy, hospitals, insurance companies, and courts.

Everybody knew it would happen. It didn’t happen exactly when or how they thought it would, but nonetheless it happened. “I told you it would happen,” a bearded man told his wife.

I walked around the mountains and the gravel roads that once were my home. The rain made tiny rivers in the clay that ran hard and fast, and I splashed in them until my feet were saturated and my hair was stuck to my face and in my mouth salty and I cried

The villagers smash in a garage door with their heads, causing some to bleed from the ears and mouth.

Brazilian girls yammer with their book bags up against my leg.

Only ever been twelve men on the moon. And one cheese.

Strike me down hard, bolt of pure blue, laser focus square, blast of hydrogen nuclear, knock me on the keister, blind me down, oh Lordy Lord Lord.

She looks exactly like my sister, though I do not have a sister.