You welcome the new girl by putting a message on her back. I breathe harder until she pops or until you ask me what I’ve seen or until you see my hand turn into a fist.

The questions piled up so high I thought I'd neverget through the door.The ease of alcohol, the incline of submission. Guttural sounds and spittle.Wipe down the morning afterwith a shower.Redress in last night's clothes.There's coffee if you want it.Sincerity too -no,…

I barely scraped the sleep out of my eyes when I heard the shrill crying from outside the kitchen window, and I recalled one of the many reasons cats can't be trusted. You see, they're evolutionarily wired to imitate the sound of a crying human baby, so when they…

This gravity thing, I reckon, is enamored with me. It loves me so much that it has fettered me with itself.

Why do you lie? the old woman repeats when her mouth is not busy filling the waste bin. We sit as far away from her wheedle and wretch as the small waiting room allows. A young woman glares at us through the mental health clinic's safety glass…

Near dusk today a car backfired on the street beneath my office window

His mother hated blue jays, hated them with a passion she usually reserved for no-count trash who drank beer on their front steps and worked on their cars in the street.

I am surprised that you’re not famous already. I remember sitting in your bedroom for hours just watching you while you wrote poetry. I was in awe of you, thinking you were going to be the next Dylan Thomas! Or Bob Dylan. Or Dylan Somebody! And I rememb

The warmth of the sun

NO IDEAS FROM HERE Tape The knife that tore the envelope tore the apricot. What was it? Water The boxes ranked against the open room. Watch So it was cut the water bright the tub. Say …

They’re young and haughty. 27’s still a long ways off. They read about the famous, not the dead. Dusty dragonflies will not land upon them, and they are really only in love with the dishwasher. Now there’s a problem. Poetry is dead,

Proponents of this pragmatic line of thinking say a tolerant approach to Islam will succeed where force has failed to persuade terrorists to abandon the religious fanaticism. It's certainly worth a try--it worked with Presbyterians.

The Devil’s laugh was the screech of wind. Ignacio Carillo heard Him as he dug the grave that would hold the body of his beloved wife.

She waited on the hot, broken pavement, arm outstretched, her thumb a ticket to a distant, refracted horizon. Waves of heat danced like undulating snakes under the spell of a charmer. She pictured herself passing through them, abandoning the green of home for the…

He started to concentrate on the music again. It was the album with the crazy picture of Monk on the cover, with a machine gun over his shoulder, a tied-up Gestapo officer and a female resistance fighter standing next to—a cow.