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Purple Eyes

The purple-eyed women on her mom’s side began generations ago.

Questions about Butterflies

All those butterflies I impaled when I was a boy—will I go to hell for that?

Quieter Than Water, Lower Than Grass: Growing Up Afraid in Russia

“Why don’t you say anything, people? These thugs are murdering me!”

Quitter

“I’m sorry,” I wrote, “but I have to go back to the bookstore.” My only plan was to plead for my old job back. To my surprise, it worked. The law was safe; the law was my father. I decided to go to law school.

Rainy Season

The transformation of their maid from shadow to sexpot thrills Maizie.

Reading Her Poetry

I was once a rider of mastodons, a waitress showing skin.

Reading Rilke and Other Poems

The men here don’t know where to place me, call me exotic grail.

Reading Two Poems

A woman’s long bare legs stretched up at the edge of the graveyard.

Ready

Her sly smile was a vicious remnant of her life before Real Life began.

Reasons I Never Tried Smoking as a Teenager

Everyone knew cigarettes were the gateway to harder stuff, like Zima.

Red Dress—1946

My head was muffled in velvet, my body exposed in an old slip.

Refinement

For a moment I had the delicious feeling of fitting in without even trying.

Reflections on How Writers Make a Living

Our culture cherishes a fantasy of a certain writerly existence.

Rehearsals

She had learned that it was easy to get Sylvi to do things.

Revision

She’d lifted the plot from a TV show she’d watched the night before.

Reynolds Price

Ringworm and the Blue Madonna

Nothing was permanent, no friend I made, no math test I took.

Rise

When he asks me if I’m ready, I don’t even know what he means.

River Song

Remember that innocence is risky, memory inconclusive.

Safety

Tomorrow I’ll be ratted out about the hunting, but I knew it’d be worth it.

Sail On

The wild-eyed horse was more a figure of nightmare than dream.

Sambo, or: The Last of the Gibson Girls

1908. The puppet’s name is Sambo. Oh what a friendly boy he looks to be!

Savages

The new generation doesn’t play war, which is a shame; they text.

Schoolgirl

Outside the kids play stretcher. One of them was dying between my hands.

Schooling

Sing to your sisters in the water, let your arms and lashes flutter.

School’s Out

Kids were just let out of school to spend the summer running in packs.

Sea Mud

Her body too, a mystery in motion. But does she own her body?

Self-Portrait With & Without

You have to be three times better than the white kids, at everything.

Senior-Year Psychology

The sex in these fantasies was always a product of love.

Sex & Love &

Sex is the closest we can come to touching where touch resides.