He noticed a freckle on the forth toe of her left foot. Her wedding toe. A direct result of one frenzied crowd of melanocytes in the dermis, adjacent to the epidermodermal junction. The fruit of a very subtle orgy.

Maybe you, citizen, should be a jerk. Jerks get where they are going. You, citizen, what about you? Handy, dandy, where’s the jerk? Conformists. Sheep. All of you, all of us, boiling out our radiators. Spending our day, our days, our lives in coope

Write power like a purring kitten eyes wide without an idea of exactly how small he is.

“A shibboleth is a test—a way to separate da wheat from da chaff that's as old as the Bible, but as new as the latest trend in men's fashions,” Gus says.

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.

That Orndoff! I'd like to shove that pipe of his up his arse.

Home is where my parents live and my relatives visit.

The pristine Hudson's/waters dance in the dark of/the East River's rinse.

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.

Whenever you act as if you're one of themit makes perfectly sad sense tome; you are one of them; we're supposed to believe there areno shadows in that particular choice? When you areone of them, they say youfall asleep with a peaceful droopinglip to your smile. When…

Food is silly. Eating is silly. Yet the camaraderie of sharing a table is not silly. It is sacred. It becomes silly when the jello arrives.

Noah's diagnosis takes several years. A doctor from North Carolina reading his case dubs the condition Bootlegger’s Syndrome.

If I saw a little old man out there, a fellow with a hunched up back, I shouldn't be afraid.

Dinner conversation reminds me of the chatter of birds. Happy talk. Nothing real.

13 rooks on a lifeless tree