“He didn’t finish ‘The Witchcraft of Salem Village,’” Scooter says, tattling on his little brother. I’m projecting him to be a first-round draft pick by the National Security Agency in about ten years.

Miles away Coriander was stepping through the forest with a light but determined step. He was exhausted, but the terrors he imagined every time he pictured his beloved in the claws of a dragon were too intense to allow for sleep.

As soon as those planes hit the buildings on September 11, it was pretty much all systems go for Cheney's long-planned Iraqi invasion. But first he had to shitcan an aide who showed him in detail how Iraq would eventually…

Once in a while I have the time of my life / in this god-forsaken Earth:

The shoreline was further inland than he remembered, a good thirty feet or so since his last visit. He stood in waist deep water — the waves of the emerald green Gulf tumbling upon his pale white torso. He had always been disappointed with the beach as a child.…

Our realtor is worried about selling our apartment. He believes it is a submarine. We cannot convince him otherwise. I agree that our apartment is a little small and more than a little cluttered. We have a lot of books. The sensation of standing or sitting in our…

Johnny K. didn't much like taking his exotic drugs any more. He now thought that the common reality was already an intense enough trip without wrapping it all up in enough gauze to cause permanent daydreams to the head. He liked his cheap hamburgers…

it’s more about how all those words look around each other. he’s more interested in the shape of things, than the reality....

It had been over three months since he’d left his home and started to walk. He’d kept a journal to begin with, but his book soon ran out of batteries. It was that sort of thing that had irked Neil at the start, but now he’d just let it slide down his back

Unless they leave you comatose,/ it’s the disasters you remember.

got the space heater going in the desert got a lot of space out there somewhere

Tiny skiers look like beetles/on a white bedspread. /We watch them fall to earth from/the high peaks and tell ourselves this is the week that sealed it

He was a Jack Russell terrier hanging like a baby in a carrier strapped to my chest He had all four legs wrapped around me and was licking me with his long tongue I asked him what his name was, and in a real low voice he said Min

The woman leapt from the top of the burning building. The flames reddened the faces of the watching crowd. The heat pushed them back. The woman hit the ground. The crowd oooooed. If only I'd been a firewoman, I thought, with a ladder as tall as a building and a…

Martin met Siena in the elevator, carrying two brown bags of groceries. She asked him to press the button for floor eight. As they rose, Martin fixed his eyes on the display as it changed numbers: G, 2, 3… and so on.