Rothko and Stella loved the beach. To Jalapeno it was just one big litter box and for her it held no great appeal. She sprawled sunbathing on the dashboard lifting a lid occasionally to watch Lauren riding a wave. The dogs delirious with freedom romped and chased tight…

Never mind that they cost millions per year just to amuse the monkey bone in us all or that they spew pollution or that their only real purpose is murder. They are justified by skill and thrill.

19. You never know yourself till you know the dust. 51. Treasures are the ligatures between our wants and love. 33. Truth is able to turn one's stomach.

some days you wake up/ to feel horror/ wrapped beneath your blanket./

What time is it? 3:47. Adam says before 5 is too early. Maybe he should stay home with our daughters once in a while. Let’s see him make it to 5 o’clock. It is Friday. I’ll mix it with orange juice. He never notices. I better check on Debra.

Clouds quickly appeared, in a perfect peach sky. Big, puffy clouds, moving together, formed the shape of a heart.

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.

Thanks to prepositions I can be on drugs, get into music, sway under the influence and rock around the clock. I can jump up and down, crawl into a sleeping bag, sleep under the stars, wander into dreams, and wake up feeling down. I can drink from a bottle, sit…

Then I am wearing a brightly colored raincoat while sitting on a deck among hundreds of tiny glowing spores

She remembered how cold it was in the factory that day. A few of the high windows stood open as usual, necessary for ventilation when the machines were all running, when the concrete floors were packed with the sweating bodies of warm human workers. The

The old man moved on an automatic wheelchair. He stopped just short of Sora. He waited for her to move, but all she did was shed one tear.

We sat quietly in my truck. My lit cigarette twitched between my lips. Samantha and I stared at the front door of Planned Parenthood in Worcester.

The woman in green doesn’t want to encounter the meter maid who is actually a man and so waits to one side at the newspaper racks as if purchasing a paper while that person writes the parking ticket (this city needs that money) and drives away in his li

Her memory was a faded pastiche of the past, and indeed the present sat uneasily in the middle of the dreams that governed her mind; so it was that often she would forget the day, the time, the year.

Her mother sighed, fingering the faux-pearls around her neck. Barbara's neck tensed, almost as though the hair on the back of it would stand up: Here comes a platitude . . .