The English phrase "Nice to see you" translates into "My gall bladder is really warm today" in Berik, a language of New Guinea. What Language Is, John McWhorter

in the pink distance / a boy in a corduroy shirt / sits before an upended electrical spindle / and drinks a vodka gimlet

Reams of saggy bunting intersect the streets.

In the zone of forgotten things, everything moves through a weak gravitational field

There are some I don’t recognize. My gaze lingers for a second. It’s bad business this.

They sat eating and looking at each other. To Ben, Claudia was certainly a handsome woman and a good bed partner, but he was getting more and more suspicious of her motives.

You go out on a night with no moon, when all the stars are flush in the sky, when all of everything, even you, is just a shadow moving softly, and I swear, you can hear it, if you listen hard enough. The music. It’s like it’s coming from under the ground.

so out to the night, and turning out the stars, so nothing can last, and nothing is taken in

The voice is back! That voice, like milk and honey, like mother, like the school nurse who bandaged my scraped knee.

Skulk like a lovespun spider in a record store corner on the orange formica subway car

Reverend Peter Roman could stand it no more. He stopped his speech. He felt a fire burning through him, a hatred for humanity and all the weaknesses of beings not perfect before God. He stood a long while, staring at the congregation. Then, he slowly spok

Charted stars by the dozens / with a side of frizzle onions / dawn showers us with glitter.

“You sure?” He nods. “Maybe it was pneuomonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” Flash of a smile, sobbing laughter, like an abandoned seal.

"The rider rode his bike in Arizona just about every day and for all the usual reasons....."

She was there then gone then there again. We were naked and wet and touching, she let me touch her, but she didn't want to be there. But she was, despite herself. It was my dream. You can go if you want. …