Picnicking In Mt. Misery Cemetery We breathe the damp shade, plum trees shining in a woodland where there are few wrong things I want to remember-- the steel fence of the power company blazing under an arc light is one. On this day of ripening fruit …

When I look at the picture on my refrigerator, I always think the same thing: "Hitler was a baby once too, look how well he turned out."

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.…

I remember, when I was selling real estate, how you could always tell when there'd been a divorce. One room was conspicuously left emptied of its contents, and these rooms were never swept or tidied. Instead they were left just as they were when the par

It is well known around town that Ray's dad went crazy. Today, when asked, everyone will tell you that they knew all along he had a screw loose, told their wife, “That Mick Borkowski's gone bat-shit.” But when it was happening, no one paid it any…

...she had marked the stars with a blue pen, connected the dots to make Andromeda, Cassiopeia, told us of the gods behind the stars...

He is sitting in the infinite rain and the water is making him some infinite silhouette

A sort of invocation of the open sky, in contradistinction to the dark of the Earth whence came the specimens, a figurative marriage of the literal darkness of exploration and the figurative light of knowledge.

Eat the Body/ Drink the Blood/ Perfect the sacrifice,

What I learned/one summer/in the North East/Thessaloniki heat was. . . .

you escape by finding the bubbles

There's a witch in Laurel Canyon.She made Wes a promise.Her bungalow smelled like Parliaments. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive oil. Parliaments, garlic frying in olive, and a freshly opened pack of Red Vines. Wes could have curled up into a ball and fallen asleep on her…

Years later Polyphemus still remembers the wine-soaked taste of Odysseus’s men. The barley and garlic-flavored Greeks. Their flesh a fibrous, blood-hued hummus. Their crunched bones releasing sweet marrow.

That was some root beer float. It cost us a grand total of $275. She pulls up in front of Fenton’s Ice Cream Parlor and leaves the motor running while I jump out and run into the parlor. It was early evening. We HAD to have a root beer float. You

The retired, widowed receptionist slapped one hand to the base of her throat with a gasp . . .