Explore

“You’re going somewhere now,” he said. “Up to the big smoke.”

The sloshed grownups had little to say to me. I loved it that I was alien.

Her mother always complained Sara was different after a night at Judy’s.

I was a son again until my parents died. Even then, I felt like myself.

Instead, she stares right at us, her shoulder half-naked in broad daylight.

You are home in your bed like a soft animal with really intense feelers.

A scene from the night before comes rushing forward like a dream.

I remember the sun on the mountain like a trembling drop of lava. When the lasso dancers were done, they kicked away like wild colts.

It dawned on me my passion was not for her but for the making-up.

I walk over to her for what seems to be an eternity. “May I have this dance?”

If I weaseled out of Bible study a little early, he’d speed me to the gym.

When the thugs from the bank showed, up my father laughed.

“I know I am disabled. Technically. But I don’t feel that way.”

As soon as I heard his voice, I felt as if a wind had swept through my head.

May the dice throw their combinations at night. May it be June then July.

We agreed: no hearts, no flowers, just courteous, no-strings sex.

She’s a blushing peach waiting to be plucked by practiced hands.

There’s something I saw at the race meeting I can’t figure out.

“The other kids. They’re making ice cream. I’ll show you, come on.”

It was an act that made me feel safer but also somehow more imperiled.

They’re not, and it’s not, and we’re not, and only a god can save us.

The excursion brought shape to that entire scruff-covered summer.

“Can’t you see Hemingway’s having breakfast with his grandson?”

She’d do anything once, to know what it was like.

The child writes, Child, and is amazed at this word on the page.

At nineteen I lived for three months as an earnest cocaine addict.

and there I was five-foot-four and most way old enough to drive