She was a beautiful woman. I don't argue with that. I welcome it.

For some, a vertical pattern will evoke prison bars, for others, product bar codes.

I know now, how she moves without verbs after you crushed her into the river.

You just watch, the schoolteachers’ll be next and then you’ll see shit go down. Imagine what happens when a fifth-grader sees his teacher getting frog-marched through a crowd on YouTube.

“They picked me up in their spaceship about noon,” Austin Grantham says to me while pulling up an apple crate to use as a stool.

I hope you'll have the time to read this before your attention wanders.

I can feel the souls of those who perished here They’re still here like old kites hanging in the sky tattered, but they won’t come down or can’t come down just yet because they haven’t fulfilled their unborn promises t

as long as you have some snacks up there I can be brave

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

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.

I rummage around to see which of our many countertop appliances might do the trick. Yogurt maker? No, I need something with more muscle. The Cuisinart--just the thing! I pick through the detachable blades—where’s the isotope shredder?

'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'

I screwed my courage to the sticking point and asked him if he had shot down any Japanese airplanes. He grinned at me. “One,” he said.

pluck me from the charred grate

I remember the tan guinea pig, dead of dehydration. Through the wire bars of her cage I viewed her body. She lay stiff on her side, stretched out, as if in her guinea-pig dream she had been running through grassland, open and close to the sky.