“What took you so long?” she asks. She seldom asks me that when we’re done, but today I feel ready to protract the glory, to tease out its rise and fall like the lingering chords of a Debussy pastorale.

If Single Stroke Seven were a cocktail, it would be a Bloody Mary made of one part Worcestershire sauce, the other part gas station vodka, and ketchup and hot sauce packets swiped from fast food joints. Chill with ice crystals chiseled off freezer walls,

not in the interest of verisimilitude/ for there's plenty of that in each day already/ as trajectories interrupt other trajectories

French citizens. The friends were all citizens of a half-assed France. The friends were all half-assed citizens of a French stance. Carol was more American, more eggnog, more cream-of-wheat. She represented dull victory.

and the moon shines on like a silver dollar and coyotes in the desert scream and holler

Santa’s ruddy snoze/

She is alone in the ocean

There was only the sound of crickets.

Her tits were perfect But came with a white picket fence Around them

This story* is brought to you by

When I first started out in my working career, I made it the habit of obtaining jobs with companies that were about to go under. (I wrote more books while on unemployment than by any other method.) I was a real bloodhound at sniffing out the pre-dawn od

The renegade states- Virginia, Georgia,/ Texas, and the rest- should have lost their names

Each brief life is lived in dedication// to the honeyed buzz of the colony,

He was ready for the rub. Tense. She could always tell. The legs, the shuffles. He had to be frantic before he would come to her, his own wife. Vanity, fright. She could read him like a book open on the table, turn his pages the way a fish flakes. "It's comfort night,…

i hope that day comes sooner rather than later.