“I won't live here,” Beth said, waving her hand to indicate the small Southern town in which they were having dinner—the most delicious fried chicken either of them had ever tasted—in a restaurant located in an antebellum mansion. She looked…

the memories return like they do every year at this time

Past the pavilion, past the factory, past the underside of the bridge where the surfers jimmy their sloppy fingers over the oil barrels.

awfully evil decisions upstairs in your head that could come back to haunt you in your later years;I'm here to report your zooming about hair isn't really one of them. You have found the infernal wheel works in all four directions at once. Good for you.…

He just had to tell somebody. Anybody. So he called up his publisher, L., who agreed to meet him at Oliveira’s for a drink. It only took about ten minutes to walk there from his big duplex in the Elmwood, where he was still living with his wife among

I went to a drum circle next night under the full moon in May, scotch broom and lilacs blooming. One does not inhale such aphrodisiacs without losing one’s balance. There were children of druids and pagans and stregas from lands over the sea, lands beyo

Contemporary persecution of Christians takes on milder forms of torture like having to explain away something Pat Robertson said, or constantly having to hear about Fred Phelps picketing funerals because he happens to hate homosexuals.

I figure maybe I’m mostly alone; they are all running down staircases or falling down fire escapes, some of them naked, some of them with towels, mostly probably naked though.

Eddie meets Sarah Packard, a “college girl” played by Piper Laurie. She walks with a limp, a fact Eddie doesn’t notice at first because she’s sitting down at a diner table in a bus station. She’s alcoholic and writes poetry.

The lungs forsake their love of breath. The arms/ resist throwing off the small weight of sheets.

What was so bad about other religions that their followers were automatically condemned to eternal damnation? The priests were so convincing when they claimed Christ was the only true way.

israeli flares light gaza/ casting incandescent nudity/ upon jumbled puzzle piece buildings.

Mayumi could see as far as her eyes could, all the buildings hugged by the trees. Roads stretching outward as if reaching for something far away.

His shirt, striped, fuzzy, is of fabric like velour and wreaks havoc with sunlight. His seat faces the aisle, I am sitting forward-faced across the aisle, we are on a half-full city bus, this afternoon.It is a funny shirt so I smile. I am not smiling because of…

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.