. . . we agree that formal standards for identifying literary merit exist and are capable of being discerned, not merely of being ascribed. —but is this itself true?

I watched as you tried to fit yourself quite awkwardly into the small chair. Your eyes fluttered curiously around my house, and I smiled to myself. Your vision landed on my smile, and your face wore an expression of puzzlement."What are you smiling at?" you asked, your…

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…

He thought of natural violence that had to do with the wind and the Atlantic Ocean. He thought of the Gulf Stream, that important title, that someone had shown him on a map and explained about in detail.

The mannequin’s blind eyes, open, green, serene, Look away from the cross, her hand Against our crotch, against Our suffering, our agony of being Alive and beating warm.

Now the house is empty of romance except a potted flowering plant from my mother for Valentine's Day. No man has set foot in my museum since I moved here. One man has set foot. The owner's brother to see about the gasket under the toilet. The Comcast installers, twice. The…

Before Uncle Max died of a heart attack, he had some words of advice for his only nephew and godson. Upon his death, as instructed, a package in brown paper arrived at Jeffery Glimson’s house on a warm June afternoon.

The boy stared out his window, noting the suns slow and eventual passing behind the distant mountains. He saw his face reflected in the window pane and turned away. His shadow loomed…

Then he said something that really made sense, said he kept a blank check in his back pocket...

F Bomb I am coming in like a blackbird. Like I'm going to tickle your mud. I am coming in carrying a half-sunk message backward. Is that your lonesome answer? I am coming in to sweep for all saints. 'Course I didn't just wake up…

I ate 3 pieces of a broken heart I wonder who ate the rest? They may have eaten the best I don’t know and can’t even start To wonder how it got in such a mess 3 pieces of a broken heart You could tell it just fell apart

He showed me the knife, said it was his best friend. This knife is older than you, he said. Here, run your finger along its blade. Like this. He showed me how to do it.

“Help me,” the man said in his mind. He lay beside the folding camp stool alone in the middle of the woods, in the clearing where he and the dog always rested.

My dad / always had a fondness for Raleigh’s kind of loss

I wonder if it was my voice or the words I was almost but not quite saying, cautious words, the kind that wander deep inside one's mind ...