No one would have picked me out of a crowd as the morbid one, but it was true that thoughts of easy exits floated through my consciousness regularly. I did my research—the easy methods, painless, guaranteed methods—and felt prepared to do, well, w

That is a six-word story. Notice that the meaning does not change with the word count. Syllabic count: pentameter (ten). Keep these commas.

[...] A crimson post-it note/ illustrates the squiggle of a resting pulse wavering/ near the broken pencil leads and whorls of/soft wood which may be classed as evidence.

His friend Boner, who was more accurately a friend of Milo, who was a friend of his cousin in Dubai and who had, up until this post, seemed to share thoughts in common with him, posted, “Holy Shit, Dude! What’re You On?”

The man was sitting at his makeshift kitchen table. He was forty-five years old. He wore his mortarboard with tassel whenever he left his home. Once inside either a reputable establishment or one generally considered less so, he was sure to take off his m

I remember one time that summer I was with you (1964) going to a bar in maybe it was Melrose Park, or Northlake, or somewhere along Roosevelt Road closer to Chicago, not as far as Cicero though. I went there with a crazy gear-head named Roger Hudson, wh

...she did wish she lived somewhere in Ancient Rome, and from one of those seven hills, perhaps during sunset, she would resolve to roll down and meet the flaming orb just as it descended so she would dissolve into embers and ash...

On his knees in front of the transplant board, he pleaded for his ailing heart, spluttering on its last dying beats, to be replaced with a bomb.

No, that can't be him, Joe thought. The guy was messing around the displays in back. He had walked in three or four minutes ago, by now, and he certainly looked the part — or at least Joe thought…

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.

Self-possession. He had it. In his arctic white t-shirt; blonde haired, broad shouldered, unburdened. “I will make you love me,” he had said, in a bar.

Miranda hugged Madam Mayweather as the girls, except Akane, gathered around them.

My heart was a puzzle completely incomplete, until I learned of love in your embrace.

whatever weaknesses you displayed// as empathetic human fellow traveler,/ your command of English survives you,// on into the last echoes of the human/ once we’re gone.

An eternity in a crashing moment.