When we were very young, we didn't tell because we didn't know any better. Now we are six, and we don't tell because no one has believed us since we told the story about the vampire upstairs. Now we're twelve, and we don't tell because our family's weird enough, living…

When the whistle drops, do not take any guff.

“Hey there!/ Here I am, a fucking moustache!/ I’m the biggest damn moustache/ you’ll ever see

I looked at it awhile waiting for it to cool. She said, "Ahh, go on! - Go on, go on.”

When you live in New Orleans, the only time you ever get to see cows is at the Winn-Dixie 24 Hour Super Store, in the back between the dairy and the seafood.

My wife is an angel. When I was a kid, that’s what we believed dead people were. Sitting on a cloud with a halo and a harp. We learned it from cartoons, but I think I’ve heard angels are supposed to be their own order, like

Long nights on the road and into the ravines, wondering wordlessly how far they had traveled and where they were going, wondering and forgetting and consulting again the map, although they now travelled those forests beyond the forests on maps

He'll tell you if you listen long enough the words run together like the teeth of a zipper.

They stumble and curse prettily, their thin arms traversed with colored lines of drainage from the swooping trays, snakes of pricey liquor tinkling down their armpits and disappearing into unwashed bras packed with soggy filler.

and all the beautiful girls are in the river And they went in dirty But they came out clean

The receiving line stretched into the lobby of the funeral home, which was decorated with faded Waverly wallpaper, dirty lemon yellow carpeting, and the kind of ornate white furniture I used to want in my bedroom when I was a little girl. The people in th

At the bar, she told me her name was Natasha, but she doesn’t look like one. She’s too thin and flighty for one thing. And all Natashas have a Russian accent and talk of the Motherland as if it were never cold and before it turned to borderlines and j

I’m a suicide prevention counselor for teens. Most of the time I answer phones and tell kids not to kill themselves over their boyfriends and girlfriends and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, etc. I’m not even sure what the number is—1-800-DONT-DIE or something li

Momentarily Winston’s thoughts muddled again. He felt his fingers twitch, a physical sensation which seemed to accompany any recollection from the past. Most of his memories were moments he’d reiterated so many times during his stay in the Ministry of Lov

The night my husband became a transvestite, crows started dying. They fell from the sky like black umbrellas, hitting the ground with a thud. A rainstorm of birds. I figured it was a virulent strain of bird flu that drifted into the clouds and killed them