“She never knew her, you know?” Chief Jack Gardner, retired, said to the duty officer absently, thumbing a well-worn photo in his rough calloused hands. His gravelly voice cracked a bit when he said it, catching his throat.

When we were young and small we played in the orchard. Mom made apple pies and fried apples, caramel apples and apple sauce, apple cider. Grandma’s apple butter recipe.

I am a scavenger. I sit on the telephone wire, a ravenous vulture watching a man and a woman arguing across the street. The clouds remind me of ashy marshmallows I found in a fire pit yesterday. The woman starts violently shoving the man; he stumbles…

Two weeks after the shadow shows up in Stephen's x-ray, you decide to do something about the bucket in the garden. You start by wedging it underneath the faucet in the back yard so tightly that it pushes against the pipe with the groan of grinding metal. Now the hose is…

A brief novel excerpt featuring two characters breaking out in song, with lines like 'Arabian knights dance sheikh to sheikh.'

When he leaves herThe weather is glorious of courseUnblinking sunshineHe walks awayShe touches the edge of his sleeve I touch his sleeveBlack jacket flung over his shoulder Black jacket over his…

In a time of drought,/ the sound of rain is sweet/ and joyful music.

the / future is now incomplete

for paul celan take it like an amulet a jewel like a tulip filling up the expanse of green the volatile view from within your thin wrist you write into manuscript for the hand is a map with but grasping still it is but a like two palms like a…

Before Sandy, there was hype of Sandy. On the third day of hype, the broadcasters laughed. Then B-O-O-M, lights out, houses flooded, and Obama was re-elected.

I avoid weddings like the plague.

The old man’s face is worn and tired, his nose and cheeks tinted red over his pale black skin from the frosty January winds blustering through town. He looks more than half frozen, which I don’t find surprising.

I'd have gone even if I got F's for the entire two weeks. The homeless would have homes, the sick, medicine; the hungry would eat. They could not wait for the generosity of Kurban Bayramı. Now was the hour of relief. The children's eyes. Lambs whose bl

One afternoon the kids from next door come over. Marion is our age, Jimmy a year younger. Marion's pretty. I can't even look at her.

I used to love myselfin hidden burstsforbidden momentsof pleasure in my morning bedlater, I numbedmy senses and stumbled blindlyinto wild sensationsof releaseand called itecstasyintensity is a drugfear, grief, anger,as seductive as joy,makes the heart pump,the blood rush…