Alysia stopped for a moment. She knew what she was going to say, but held back her words and thoughts. Chisame took advantage of her hesitance.

The two were huddled in a corner of an alley, joined by some others that I’m sure wandered into the darkness when they realized they were far from alone. That alley was the one off Market Street. I used to steal candy from the corner shop when I was nin

The trainers looked at her and smiled and they were still one creature with four legs and two heads. The old man’s left eye moved in sync with the younger one’s right eye.

My favorite was a red bowler, a man's hat, which I never dared wear outside my tiny bedroom. My three brothers wanted it too much to take that kind of a risk. They'd poke me with various sharp objects: the serrated edge of the bread knife, the rusted TV

The coffins pile up gnawing dust on the glass panes to the rims of my binoculars. Shadowy cracks of stifling proportions, gliding over my eyes a requiem of mahogany. At dawn they heave between the workers’ hands, leave their resting places for a green tra

There's a mirror in front of me and I thought it was so I could see myself, but I didn't want to see me.

no one else comes in my back door but you

...a blunt thrust of a face, uncongenial in profile, and the ubiquitous green cap that says John Deere, with the yellow ideogram of a deer for graduates of our local schools.

" Not a day goes by/ that isn't stabbed with common sorrow"--Maurice Manning Crazy's alright by me if it's a harmless plea for some little sanity, or unavoidable by birth but it just won't do for tricks. Like say I go over there right…

Out the window is an empty birdbath, dry flaky concrete ring, no birds.

I am wearing stolen socks. Not because I haven't any of my own, and not because they are an exact fit. Only because they soothe my emptiness inside.

Here’s the story as compiled from the scantest of clues: The writing on the back of a stall door in the restroom of a twenty-four hour restaurant under the Gowanus Expressway.

"good luck, and be assured acceptance for representation or publication is based on different criteria at different agencies and we are sure you will yet find someone mentally deficient enough to give your book a shot."

It was only when blood began to drip onto the page that he realized he'd been hit.

“Last night the Scots invaded Sweden,” I wrote, “to retrieve the silver filched from the Irish the Norwegians had in their coffers when Sweden conquered. The Swedes offered the Nobel to a Scots writer to keep ... the peace."