Eventually, all the windows on the street went dark, each small house cloaking its occupants in a world unto itself, soundproofed and emotionally remote.

no one likes a bitchy cowboyhike up yer britchespull yer brim down'nshut up and ridestop making petsout of peevesand idolsout of gossipinsteadmake a hobbyout of yer horseand fer godsakesseason that saddle

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.

I sink until water saturates my lashes, waiting, breathless, for the words to stop.

No snippet to see, here. The piece is so short a snippet would be the whole thing.

One sunny morning, a big-bellied ball of yellow fur surveyed a yard full of prospective adopters and ran straight to one. She’d been chosen.

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

once wedding cake under pillows. now fluffy frosting on squashed defeat

....sees the beginning of a new day through the closed shutters, hears the guard washing up at the sink, feels the beginning of a cry in his throat.

As long as he could still take the stairs, he would go down there to be with the memories that each piece held. He knew that their time was about up, because his was too. His wife had already gone, and even before that she had long stopped using the washe

When you finally got blood from the hard stick You spotted the backflash of red And said Thank God. The woman’s legs and arms Were everywhere, and you were in the middle Holding her down with one hand while wielding A butterfly in the other. You stuc

I have never met Joe’s brother, of course.

Most nights while in his sleep, with his one good eye deeply shut, the old man can hear the whispers of the specter in the remote wanderings, holding the surrounding woodlands in its snare. The sound of it closing in, with the bones of the universe crushing in…

His middle name was Perceval. He judged the first Miss America contest in 1922. He saw himself primarily as a storyteller in the Dickensian mode.He claimed to be an illustrator rather than an artist. He disliked driving but loved to walk, and preferred…

He runs a mail-order business from a storefront and distributes a catalog of disappeared things.