the two become one where/ all things end,

“Okay,” I say, “but my point is the only way you’d ever know if someone really loved you is if they put their life on the line when it counts. Otherwise you gotta take their word for it.”

Cicadas shed their skin as they grow, leaving crisp hollowed out remains on tree trunks, fence posts, and the undersides of upturned leaves. Tommy and I would collect them in the early morning and stick them to our clothes like brooches. I used to like Tommy,…

Now it's late. I am hanging upside down from a rope coiled around my crushed left ankle, the pain too sharp to be really felt, as the excess blood to my head makes my thoughts fuzzy. I am almost two meters from the rock face, thirty-five hundred meters above sea-level, the…

When Chuck dies, I’ll throw/ a party and dance, a little drunk,/ across what I’ll pretend/ is the old shit’s grave.

Her feet are raised upon an embroidered green pillow and she sits naked in a blue velvet chair. Red earrings dangling from her ears, while a red monkey sits at her feet with one leg extended. She is exotic. A powder blue on her lips and at her navel,

I learned how to fall in love, in one hour, watching The Waltons. John Boy fell in love with Jenny. Jenny fell in love with John Boy. It taught me the right way to fall in love. It taught me the right way to let love go. I was 12 years old. It was a lesson I…

Marcy was not herself today, her mother said when the school called. She was under the weather and she could not play with the other children. Marcy's mother began to suspect that her daughter was not herself very early on that day. Walking up the stairs Dolores…

I would like to go back (with spade, pick, soft bristles), and sift through time and layers, brush away the intervening years, and find: the tooth, knocked out by my then best friend, when we were seven, careening downhill in my father's wheelbarrow on Boscobel…

The bartender kept looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar. “Everyone in Hollywood is an actor,” Doc said.

I suppose it was inevitable, This crashing of souls, This recognition of possibility to create. If we were younger, We would make a baby, The ultimate act of faith. Now it has to be something else, Nothing to force a track with night feedings, …

Laurel's new bike is powder blue, with silver tassels on the handle bars. Jenny's mouth actually waters at the sight of it, as though it were a fresh loaf of bread or a perfect, juicy orange. “You can ride it if you want,” Laurel…

Of flowers there Are none In June No sun Upon my cheek The gentle breeze Stirs me not The smiles They cloud my vision Birds they Sing their songs But I hear Them not When tears Rain down My heaven.

just before my break,/ he came on the line,/ old and slow with computers now/ but wanting a discount/ he'd been told he qualified for.

Then I found myself in the water.