Each evening the man allowed himself an hour of fresh air. He and Prickles would situate themselves on the tiny balcony overlooking the same street, a blanket bundled around them both for warmth. These were the times he liked to talk to Prickles the most

We cannot cross the river until it freezes. Bekker predicts January. For food we gather leaves, berries and roots from the thick forest behind the cabin. Suarez boils what we find into a revolting paste that we spoon into our mouths with dirty fingers.

“Oh yeah?" I said to Stendhal. "I found six references to women's eyebrows in Travels in the South of France. That's all you think about!”

He looked peaceful.

Her smile like fortune’s cannot be coerced but she opens her peignoir. He stares at the sullen bullethole between her breasts, dark blood welling slowly with each heartbeat. Does he bow slightly, turn away whole? You suppose not. She closes the door.

Because you alone must know how to make a smile shine at me and be like the sun, I can only feel its warm and coolish colors becoming that perfectly deepened yellow then on to the red if you please that makes a shy kind of blue out of day. That…

gravel coughing up tires at 90 miles an hour and just getting under way

I dreamt I was raped the other night. Sometimes it was me, that is, and sometimes it was another woman with a dark bouffant hair-do. Definitely outside though and the hulking back of the man was covered by a charcoal wool…

A cloudy autumn morning greeted Sean as he stepped from the trolley at Grand Central Station. On his way to the tracks he purchased a copy of The New York Times dated October 24, 1934.

I take her hand. More grey dust rolls off the arms, over the railing, into the wind. It’s embarrassing and I let go. I think she told me to throw them away months ago. I rub her bare thigh. She laughs real soft like. The corner of her lip curls up.

Five evangelists in bathing suits baptize a man while green chilies roast on a Ferris wheel rotisserie

two pairs of arms and legs

Colton nods, without words, understanding the significance of every word that the Old Man has uttered, knowing that in the end, given enough time, we all go down that lonely corner, to embrace the darkness, wishing to be cured of our sentiments.

Soon, out of the womb ‘down there' is nuance. It guides you, like a legality, like your own breathing, in and out of overtone, hardcore hodgepodges, those inklings near sacrosanct beyond breakfront negligees and neo-negligence leading the good life. Isn't it…

I am exceeded / by a leaf