I passed Buster Keaton on the way to work this morning. He was standing, hands in pockets, at the corner of Riverview and Keil. It was the young Buster, handsome and still strong enough to pin down the scars that marked his childhood. This was the Buster

"And you’ll forgive my sayin’, your Maggie’s in heat, and if ya want to keep her you’re gonna ‘ave to fight. To be sure after this they’ll leave ya alone.”

I lock the last of the beer and wine doors and head back to the cash register. Our clocks are not on bar time so I only have a few minutes. I check the till. A stack of ones and three fives. Enough to break a twenty, but looking bare. The parking lot's empty. The air…

Once Mom finally came to terms with the fact that my brother was gay, she became convinced he was a serial killer. “He has all the signs,” she told me as she trimmed my hair. “Signs?” I asked, watching her in the…

A child in a new world/ by way of the old I won’t remember.

I was afraid of needles and ponds of water and I was transfixed by both.

a poem about an abduction in my NYC neighborhood

Jane watched her mother remove her wedding ring with butter.

Our problems started with a few back and forth texts of emojis late one night. The next evening, a Friday, typically my poker night with the guys, my girlfriend came to the door.“You brought over pizza, how nice,” I said. “And, oh, gosh, look at that, a…

My name is Wanda McClure and I lived in the foothills of Eastern Kentucky. A small town miles off the interchange, and mostly in the middle of nowhere. I lived in a trailer. I was 52 years old.

His open door was interpreted by the neighbor as an invitation to all but place a mirror under his nose. She demanded opportunities to fluff his pillows and coerced him into accepting gifts of food, more than he could possibly eat, and sometimes ate with

I HAVE NOTHING MORE TO SAY TO YOU, she lisps, and, with this, the fissure in the man’s head reaches the bottom of his chin and the hollow head splits in two.

All the neighborhood kids waited for the school bus on a small cement slab at the bottom of the first big hill on Blackhorse Road. My mother made me scrambled egg sandwiches on wheat toast every morning for breakfast before I left for school. Then one mor

The last time Ray and I broke up, I flew my flag at half-mast. It was the kind of thing that pissed him off. He was very big on flag etiquette: how the flag should be folded, the fact that it should never touch the ground, when to fly it at half-mast, the rules regarding…

feeling obligated to write/ is like feeling/ obligated to fuck.