Naked Lady? I know that from somewhere. Then he remembered. That's what they called those old 1930's and 40's Conn saxophones, Naked Ladies. How would Smith know that?

I call him a Staffordshire terrier. You call him a pit bull. Some people say he's lovable. Other people say he'll bite your face off without thinking too hard.

He huddles against the wooden beam of a chop suey stand, glaring out into the giant technological organism that was his city. Lights, hulking monstrosities and endless possibilities were teeming in the night-hustle that surrounded him.

The months leading up to that night were unbearable. It was as if a debt loomed over us begging to be paid. We both knew I would find you dangling at the end of a rope, it was only a matter of when.

There is a rock somewhere with the truth of the sky in it, the glitter of otherworldly charms that falsify the ugliness of the literal.

My lipline's retreated since Tuesday. I'll toss those Hazel Bishop reds, (lipstick on shriveled lips rattles men, scares little children) skip Woolworth's cosmetics counter, save backaching, ankleswelling pondering of powders, rouges, …

She overcomes herself on the day of the spectacle, clown paint, unmoving amid a rumble of trains and screens, video logs and snapshots, live blogs from phones wet with lotion. This is Tokyo. Facial masks. Bare flaking paint in streams. Stardust.

This Tippy’s name was Cheryl — something both of them were so far not committing to paper or saying. Unusual in a salesman, she thought. He is insincere and intends to sell her something.

For reasons he couldn't fathom, his motorcycle only moved in reverse. He engaged the engine and lurched backward hard. He called a friend, a gear-head with perpetually dirty nails, asked him to look it over.

“Do we really want to treat her? Is she even really sick, or does she live in a country as real as ours, but one we can never visit?”

an awkward stage between glued popsicle stick marsupial, and mechanical tin foil mammal.

I met Barry Hannah once in my life. I’d come to Oxford, MS, to meet an entirely different writer whom I thought then and think now very highly of. I’d also come to escape from another slew of regrets. Oxford is a great city to run away to.

She picked the fish out of the box leaving a pool of mucus and blood slowly congealing on the shelf and dripped it toward the kitchen table. Outside the wind lashed the tops of the poplar trees together and rain sprayed from the barn roof opposite.

Vegas is turning out to be my kind of town. Easy money, free booze, and everyone is too overstimulated to realize I’m broadcasting right into their noggins.

I lie on the floor of the hut and for some reason I start to think about the Harvest Days carnival and that game where you have to toss a dime in a dish to win a stuffed animal. Next thing you know I’m a little tiny guy in there in that world of plates