I was supposed to write a history of the old world and expose the selfish ones who use their best kept love for evil against the good little witches of childhood, but it made no sense to me to go after them in that obvious a way. They…

Zoë was stunning in a designer gown so revealing and form-fitting that only static electricity could keep it on her body.

Willa knows why Jimmy reached for the thirty ought six Chambered a round With three more clinking in his pants pocket And took to the roof

“I was thinking about the other night.” He said from the living room.      She could hear his work boots scrape and creak across the old wood floors, and the sound of his weight landing on the couch, then the snap of the lighter as he lit the pipe and…

Beyond a jade gate, a lotus pillar nods to / a braided fort.

There it it again, that noise. That low hum that I know so well now, spinning, gaining momentum in my head, like a cyclist in a velodrome, until its steadiness and roundness becomes sharp, painful, cutting like glass.

I've been floating dearadriftI could not see you clearlythrough the tattered, hazy scrim the boundary between usmight as well have been a canyonyou reached for me anda vice tightenedaround my headI wanted to merge with youmy heart wished for abrilliant explosion of limb…

Let us both stand steep, alone, this night; the tide Lies, hastening to us: and, far away, I hear the sea gulls sweep, through the divide That shapes drear skies, between dead lights of day. What worth was love? Man severs all he is, To make one…

There was always something about the air in the deep south. The summer air. It was always so thick. So heavy. Joey didn't notice. He didn't know any better. He had lived in Savannah all six years of his life. He did remember the one time his father and…

When he saw me, he jumped faster and faster, wild like something rabid.

Marcel Proust had never been to a big-box store before. He was dazzled by the sheer size and scope of the store and the seeming impassivity of the shoppers. So many products, so many shelves, such strangely intriguing examples of the human condition. The people seemed…

[YOU BETTER BE READY FOR THIS!]

Hilda Raz lost a daughter. Her son gained a persona, backed by biological components. I was impressed by his male-pattern baldness. A biological genius. And yet, I was reduced and in the elevator mentioned crying about it.

I repeated your name like a mantra / and vomited black bile in the sink. / Some Buddhist monk told me / if I recite it ten thousand times / you will be mine.

Motivation always needs to come from somewhere. For some all it takes is a sunny day, a smile from a stranger or a simple pat on the back. Others demand a fire lit, a carrot dangled or a whip cracked. Yet here the sun had set, the fire extinguished and th