Esmée sat alone at a table on the terrace at Marina Jack’s in Sarasota. She had been there ten minutes and no waitress had approached her.

She wheeled more deeply into the office towards Mason’s desk. Keith hurried to the desk and pulled the chair out of the way for her and a sat down next to her. She was blue-eyed, pale and completely hairless, which made it difficult to guess her age.

There’s someone in the audience who is immolating himself Cutting his own leg over and over with a pen knife And groaning: “Oh God, oh God” And all I can think from up at the podium is This guy must absolutely hate these poems I am reading

We got a sandwich at Mr. Pickle's, but they cut the sandwich in the plastic. Plastic wrap.

“I do not know if you can hear me, or if you can talk to me. Some people do not believe in people like you, you know, spirits, ghosts or whatever you are. I do. I know you are here because of what happened here.” I could not speak. I did not feel I could.

Each had jostled and laboured for his or her place upon the blunt outcrop, in the cold persistent darkness, where the outcrop was merely something that had fallen and not quite been washed away.

Even the old medicine woman seemed to grin with a perverted sort of understanding when she opened the door to find Lys waiting outside. She was comfortable nowhere and ready to flee at any moment.

Flicking the cigarette into the river the man's face becomes soft, as if waving goodbye to the only real attachment that he has felt in decades.

The Poisoning I used to call my dad Serpico. Thirty years on the police force, and though a respected officer, he never fit in. He never had beers with the guys at the end of a shift or engaged in the more lewd locker room talk. None of the other cops were privy to which…

~(+)~

When the dark shadows of his limp eyes told us life was slowly seeping away, stolen by his stroke, his wife signed the “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” order and, tearfully leaving the room, she turns, asking a final question, “Think a needy family could use his…

Suddenly something clicked.

in which a man who is bored with years of retirement poses a threat to himself and others

He thought she should have come with an owner’s manual So he would know how to operate the equipment It was definitely more than he bargained for Or knew how to handle She was too hot

I recalled the one night stand I'd had with the girl one balmy summer night in Minneapolis. We lay on my bed in the moonlight, and I touched the nipples of her tiny breasts with the thumb and pinkie of one hand.