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The Suicider (draft)

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He woke up four hours later in his car in his garage with the worst headache of his life. He lurched out of the car and kicked over a basket of basil as he toddled towards the door to the house. He stopped and scooped the spilled basil back into the baske

Skin Wins

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One day, my feet and hands got into an argument. My feet argued that they were superior because they were not only the foundation of my body, but the cause of its mobility. They were modest in size, yet supported and transported an entire body that towered over them.…

Resolution

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You say you want a resolution Well, I got one Let's start with nothing at all No logic, no war, no whiskey or bombs

Serve & Protect

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If she was still breathing, Tom promised himself he would let her live, but right then his shoulder ached and his right hand was throbbing.

Sanctuary Beach

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We eat, sleep, play Scrabble on our iPads, and go down to breakers at sunrise and sunset. The sunset is spectacular.

What my daughter knows I know or some likely version

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He doesn't call, not even on her birthday. She doesn't mention it or complain. She knows she doesn't have it as bad as some, even in this privileged Triangle of North Carolina. She is white and pretty and belongs to what's left of the middle…

henry

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her skin was delicate, fragile, that old woman skin that appears to be translucent.the rip caused by the knife opened it up like tissue paper. blood welled for a moment, then poured out with real purpose.this was the delight he found in old ladies.. the scent of their…

Strange

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Words are looking ever so strange today like a hole in space a wind in a cloud a face superimposed over a mountain

Worn

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The shirts hanging by the back veranda serve as our memorial to them.

The Kill

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I kill because I can’t stop. I kill because I can.

i'll give you a large sum of money for finding my kite. thanks.

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sometimes we saw it in the sky. we'd stand on invisible stairs trying to reach it. running like frightened geese. we were going to catch up with it. grab onto its string. pull it down.

Dry Tuna

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"If you don't like it then leave!" Sally screamed.

Separation

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The increasingly furrowed lines on his forehead made her stomach clench.

Life Among the Epiphytes

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Have you ever seen anyone die? It will alter your life. Because you suddenly realize that anxiety was worth something after all, and was a coin of the human condition, imprinted with hectic symbols, some of which resemble cypress, others more like Frankenstein:…

The Weird Gods

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"The weird gods climbed down from the moon, past low-hanging clouds and upon leafless treetops. Their unusual boots first touched ground in a parking lot in the city. The snow crunched."

Tendencies

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Will he do it with a gun? If it’s a gun, will it be a short one, shaved so he can hold it against his head. Will it look like the photograph he showed me, black and brown. I told him he couldn’t possibly buy something like that from a Walmart.

Measures

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Pascal would let something slip now and then. He was sharp and spoke excellent English, with a beautiful Spanish accent. He corrected speech among the guys, but he exercised his lessons in grammar with an eloquence that fascinated all of us, not letting a

Imagining the Reading as Effacement

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What the spaces say// can be heard in the short/ and longer silences

Sold 2 Books Though

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Reading at Menlo Park Senior Center, old people falling asleep leaning to the left in their chairs, all in the same direction.

Building This Thing and That Wall

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The world has long since been bootlegged by madmen. The new invisible con men are the same as the old visible con men, hiding and lying behind their walls of lingering death. There's a weapon wielding demon hell bent on an insane vengeance crawling around…

J.D. Salinger's Toilet Put Up For Auction

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Everybody will be talking about it on campuses across the country “Hey! You’ll never guess who’s toilet I bought. I’m not shitting you!”

Building Houses Out of Words

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I remember sitting there on the first unfinished rooftop, watching you building houses out of words. You hammered in grammar and punctuation; you said these things needed to be hammered in by hand. You drove the long straight exclamation …

Visitation

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We sat up in bed. It's ‪two o'clock‬ in the morning. Blinding circular flashlight beams probe through the half pulled shades. Magnified black silhouettes of men's torsos lumber back and forth in the yard. We are in a fishbowl and being invaded.

Inside Out

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Who hasn’t at some point of the day wanted to dredge up everything in your pocket just to see what it is.

OUT ON THE EDGE OF VICTORIAN CIVILIZATION

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Lottie was a slim, fine looking woman. But Dale thought her breast implants were the worst case of overkill he had ever seen.

Honey Bee Men

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"...she's been seeming like she's been dreaming while awake lately..."

Sometimes Errands Take Longer Than You Might Think

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She dropped the bundle of faggots she had collected and spun around with her mouth open.

Betrayal

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My brother Herb married his high school sweetheart right after completing college. This was a girl named Beryl, whom he'd met originally in Mr. Reinert's marching band at York High School in Elmhurst. I remember one day in particular in the middle of the

my love for you

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my love for you/ is like the falling snow

The $64,000 Question

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One day over a hardscrabble dinner of gristly beef and lumpy mashed potatoes, his uncle looked up at him and said, “Kee-rist, boy, school’s gonna start any day now. And winter ain’t far behind. I can’t keep you here. We gotta figure out something for you.