When I first started out in my working career, I made it the habit of obtaining jobs with companies that were about to go under. (I wrote more books while on unemployment than by any other method.) I was a real bloodhound at sniffing out the pre-dawn od

For instance, my sister's husband. If I say brown socks, yellow boxer shorts, fishnet undershirt. If I say plastic bag and two tepid beers. And a voice that glides to falsetto when he: you're a tad too obscene for my taste, Julia, while he tries to light the filter end of…

Going to the candy store at night in the section of town called Kalliope. Riding bike, trying to get there before it closed at ten. Getting candy at that little store with the glass containers and the rows and rows of candy. Getting milk there…

That night we went out to shoot some pool at the pool hall over on Durant Avenue, which was above a bar called Kip’s. Rotten Bobby walked in with his own damn pool cue, which came broken down in two pieces. He carried it in a narrow felt-lined carrying

We decide not to go to the emergency room

Dear Sir/ Madam I wish to apply for the position you advertised in the Daily Sun. Although my expertise is in self-obliteration and self-worth (or lack of), and my work mainly in disappointment, I do have much experience in failure, which this letter will…

The songs that she used to sing to him still dance in his head while he wrangles equations. The stars in the cosmos spell out her name.

The days cut off by damp chill with every thought a different variety of protection.

You’re never really asleep. I am never awake. But as the darkness fades, I read. Your body tells my story.

1.As fast as that I wake to astonishing desire. I'd met you at my parents' house just the weekend before but for them (them the drained students trying to relax, refill before their afternoon sessions) you are the stranger in the room,…

Then he took the tune out to Ben Clarone land. The horn was beautiful, if leaky. His fingers flew over the keys.

I laughed maniacally in my head at the thought, but I kept picking at it all the same, the bunnies had plans for us.

Susan said since her divorce three years ago there have been too many Jacks in her life. Seven, if she counted that older guy. She knew that now. Too many. It was the name and little else that drew her to men. She told me the name alone was like Pavlov's bell. It…

She left knives and hot pots with handles akimbo. Like a guardian angel, he turned them in. Like an ungrateful Eve, she turned them back out.

Even word dancers need rest.