Now, gazing into Greg’s expectant eyes, the only Chinese word Deepti could summon was kuei. Ghost. Before that summer, her mother flipped through the pages of Maxine Hong Kingston’s memoir every day, as if she could glean magic from the touch of her finge

My dad at the wheel, my mother's ulcer inflamed, she puked her way across northern Alabama that summer, from Huntsville and the rusting rockets to Tuscumbia, the farthest any of us had been west. We drove through raw, blistered towns,…

Came to admire Kiyoko Matsumoto. Japanese. Aged 19. Lesbian. 1933. Jumped into a volcano.

And my word! Wouldn’t you know it, in two shakes of a jiffy they have shucked off all their clothes and are butt naked right here in my den. I don’t have to wonder what Mother would say if she could see them here. “Keep the noise down, boys!” I ha

He stared at the mirror, his hair looked chewed up–severed by a miniature lawnmower.

Trying to hide, and yet, what continued to permeate was the shiny.

In grief, I'd ride a slow train there with you, / one hand in yours and one hand on the rail,

Cold water shocked Ernest's face. The evening with Gracie had his nerves hot and popping. She was his fifth date and the closest to his memory of Sadie in college so far. He looked up at himself in the bathroom mirror with his mouth agape. Redness flooded…

Why can't you mimic your mythical counterpart? Anna Karenina? Have you never considered the tall dark stranger? The boot to the face, the fangs on the neck? Vronsky is Russian Gentry, a veritable prince and he swept that Anna off her feet in two sec

Mack’s mind held a chandelier.

The woods. They say don’t wander too far into the woods, where those ghosts can’t hear you and the moonlight won’t trace you a path. In the black crowd of trees there’s something waiting. Don’t go to the where the siren is singing...

We make our way into the Colosseum–excuse me, the Prince Spaghetti Colosseum–and take in the beauty of Italy’s national pastime; sadistic cruelty to wacko religious cults.

“For Chrissake! Just get me one of fucking Tony's half-assed, made in China bullshit, getaway cars. My plate is hot!” I had never hated cars so much before. Not so much the cars, but the sound the cheap ones made when they drove past my house. The…

He could smell the vestiges of alcohol on his folks. They’d let him stay up till midnight to mark the new year, and his mother had sneaked him a taste of her whisky. He remembered now what she’d last said before sending him off to bed, how strange it soun

She offers the girl a seat, asks her to stay for a minute, but she can’t, she just came by to say hello, and don’t you like my new raincoat?