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.

They watched the seven o'clock news.

For the first time in her life She felt she understood The smell of a man. The smell of white tulips, The taste of a persimmon In her mouth. She remembered how married she felt To him, in that moment. How close To the earth, and ancien

Jill's number was flashing on Carol's caller ID. Jill, the baby sister she had practically raised after their mother died of a stroke when Carol was 12. It had been months since they'd talked. Jill had been avoiding Carol because Jill's idiot husband Mark…

May 1890 Rifle, COLORADO Only pressure can change one thing into another. In terms of time, the…

—So much for a cocktail at the tender hour of twilight, he told the empty beer bottle.

In the summer when it's light out later it's my nature to linger a couple of hours in the park after work, just standing around watching the Downtown Divas working the corner, offering themselves to each male driver who stops for the light and I always joke with them about…

Let's say maybe you're in a place your mind has never left, and let's say maybe it's Mississippi, and let's say maybe it's summer with kudzu throbbing green all around you, and let's say maybe she's a Sagittarius girl, standing in that driveway with her young breasts…

While he was in there he saw another man walk in, five years his senior. He was ushered back by a woman with bare legs and a white coat, as if she was role playing a professional masseuse. He'd caught sight of the man's ring finger and it hand a plain gol

I like babies and little kids, more than some people but goddamn, children's laughter out of nowhere (in the night, when you're not expecting it) is creepy. I don't like slugs smeared like nightmare goo on my summer-bare feet, I could do without them in …

So I lopped off his head and reworked the creation...

The skinny one was kinda cute. He had this little mole over the left corner of his mouth that she just wanted to suck. She kept watching it go up and down as he talked, the way his full lips kept spreading and coming together. She really wanted to kiss…

They articulate my failings as a human being./ They articulate my greater rage at human beings// here for such a short time and at the precipice already

...it's about female needs, Rex.

Sitting on the couch when we got cable television, on that first day. Pressing buttons that sounded like the slap that your attention span would take as you made your way through the twenty, thirty, forty channels. As you grew older, the amount of channel