Opposite the foothills, on the field's southern edge, was a stand of old eucalyptus trees, each one a gnarled sentry with bark like burnt skin peeling from its trunk.

Rarely is Quay Street so clean, Monday in rain, Neactain’s ticking over with Slow jazz and crosswords, Stout and steaming anoraks.

The rain is no terrible epitaph

When I came back home, after coming down with polio, everything had changed for me. I'd been gone for forty-five long days and nights. But it was Halloween, a time very nearly sacred for children in the Midwest, and it brought out the charity of the who

We two have this entire lifetime left, so let's waste it . . . .

I see my siblings once a year when we all show up, as if required by law, to eat Thanksgiving dinner. It is apparent with every bite how much they hate each other.

and light bleeds into the darkness

A bedridden ward of the state,/ warehoused in a nursing home,/ unable to drive to the liquor store/ for whiskey and cigarettes,

Some of them are notorious tweakers. Nobody epitomizes the cowboy-outlaw biker more than the ironworkers, who are wired on Black Beauties they sell on breaks.

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.

. . . quit being so rigid, open up to the pasta.

I tell my woman friend the new man's penis is too large. I tell her once. She asks me later whether I asked about it at the doctor's—large cock, she calls it, and I say I told the doctor my boyfriend's in a wheelchair.

On finding out that gonads are part of the female anatomy as well.

But if He makes you happy, stands/ as bulwark against the vast, indifferent/ and deadly universe, then cling to Him

There is a price. It's on the back. If you turn it around you'll see. It isn't expensive. Everything's okay.