She's not a poet, but does she have to be? She comes to the reading to read the poems of her recently dead husband, for she made a vow: that she would read his work at an open mic. Now she is keeping her word. It's her way of keeping him alive or maybe it's his way of…

The hairs on my arm lift with the breeze; a haunting breath from the open window carrying night-scented stock from the black-shrouded garden.

Newhouse returned his gaze to his wet palm, which he lifted to his nose with suspicion, sniffed again and again, then struggled to move out from under the growing stream.

Papa says an adding machine tape has gotten tangled up around his legs. He pulls it off his leg, but it's really his catheter tube, so he wets the bed. I tell him he's not in a tree, and I clean it up. He tells me all about it for an hour, and I to bed.…

No twinkle- so, planet, not star./ And bright, so either Venus/ or Jupiter. I’m guessing, Jupiter.

But if he's been photographing her for almost thirty years, there must be close to 11,000 images. During the session, they don't speak. And, after so long, words are not really necessary.

Sin by Nonnie Augustine After my mother died, I met Aunt Shirley. I found her in dozens of snapshots piled in falling apart cardboard boxes we hauled down from the attic. Small girls, with huge bows bobby-pinned right on top of…

Know what you’ll become? You’ll become one of those guys who masturbates in any single occupancy restroom that locks.

When I finally met the time broker, he sat at an antiquated mahogany desk with no computer. He looked up and waited for me to speak. "Time for sale," his ad had advertised, and I was ready to pay

Night's air awhirl, the sky shoots fireflies. Sometimes, she bleeds black arrows in her dreams.

Once a psychologist told me a story

Street mime in white face and white gloves, trapped in invisible box. Tip jar empty. Marcel's solo-dancing the tango now, teeth clenching ephemeral rose. Passersby pass him by.

She smiles at strangers,

The moonlight news is brutal

When you think I'm not looking, I always am. You say it's like nicotine, your best analogy as a non-smoker. The kind of hit that is hard to live without and isn't it human nature, you ponder.