My grandmother is magnificently breasted in her floor-length nightgown.

Nurse Smithers straightened Dr. Baumgartner’s feathered head dress. it had slipped down below the caduceus so carefully painted on his forehead by the medical ritual staff.

This will be the century of infinite sadness,/ sadder even than the Twentieth/ with its expansive catalog of horrors.

She hasn't called me in days. Before calling her, I search my memory for something romantic to say. Shakespeare's Sonnet 73 says exactly what I'm thinking. But she doesn't need to hear it. She already knows, as all human efforts come to an end, my core energies are tapering…

Stars fat as the stars that Van Gogh painted on his easel in Arles, a ring of candles burning on the brim of his hat. Stars that fill the night with delirium.

One of the publishing industry’s dirty little secrets is that first novels sell much better than second novels. So why not enhance your chances for success by calling your second novel your first?

Wanna,wanna, whoop de loop. Hold my baby, kiss my mom, dance the way I used to do. Desktops, blacktops, cut and paste, speed down hills, learn the rules, Sister Saint Marion, married to Christ. Sixteen, life-green, pink tights, Swan Lake, an…

. . . my situation.

Sacrificial vic bleeds out . . .

Read signs sometimes and you just might get where you're trying to go. When Eddie suggested they stop for a Whopper, Dennis said no. "Fuck Burger King, man. Let's get that Wendy's up there." They got…

I have reasons to believe she’s been stealing.“ “Stealing what?” “Steaks.” “Steaks?”

Times were tough back then. Just a few jobs. This was in the late thirties. It's the story of how Albert hooked up with Iris. Their unlikely meeting took place when they met out on the Highway 61 right-of-way just outside of Natchez, Mississippi, each trying to hitch…

Later

Steven was a hollow tree of a man — outwardly normal for a tired fortysomething, but empty inside. He lived alone in an old farmhouse that reeked of decomposition and Lysol, the previous tenant having left a dozen skinned raccoon carcasses in the attic.

Lucy shrugs into the corner of the train's seat. She envelopes her IPod in both hands as if she's praying or holding a conch shell: safe, secure like when she visited a Morcombe beach in the school holidays. The only giveaway's the white headphone cord.