Explore

When the snake attacked the soldier, its fangs left a violent opening.

No one’s alone. Men kill for this, or for as much. And what of the dead?

Those under us are not dead. They are dancers. We are the music.

The three of us share a myth, that I’m fragile as old bones. My parents speak in low voices—about me, I’m pretty sure. I watch the waitress, trying to remember how to flirt. I take off my mask.

He pushed aside a photograph of a man with a knife stuck in his eye.

He cut down on beer and moved into the hotel that had my name.

“Hey, you look lost,” the hunter had said. “You better come with me.”

The boys searched for their father, lost somewhere in the Olympic Range.

Some people see the man but not the light, the field but not the varnish.

She wonders if he will be all right. She assumes he has four-wheel drive.

West Oakland was characterized by unemployment, poverty, and blight.

Spanish men. They whispered and whistled. It made her jumpy.

Owen’s head throbbed, his ears ached, and an anvil sat on his chest.

My mother and I remained apart. My father came late to the party.

I was dusty, my ponytail all askew and the tips of my fingers ran red.

She asked, “What’s the weirdest thing you can do with your body?”

She began to see the word, or traces of it, wherever she went.

Who was responsible for my father not living up to expectations?

What’s the harm? Will you fight even the healing powers of love?

Ajax killed men and then animals thinking they were men.

I waited and waited, rethinking first sentences in my sleep.

Euclid stands in front of his lover’s door, open to the last hours of light.

Where my mom was wasn’t never far from the Myrtle Beach Days Inn.

His mother wasn’t there to meet him at his stop. She never was.

The cat was looking at me with an intelligent expression. It knew.

There was a shout, then a shot fired. I pressed the shutter again and again.

“We’re not like other species,” you say, a novelist at night.

I’m recalling his socks, the inked initials, the splashes of blood.

Let’s walk down to the river, bless the paper boats and turn it all into wine.

I wanted my love to be everywhere, then love began to bite through me.