Explore

You’re feminist? Neither one of you. You just like getting into fights.

Only one constant existed: I wrote. Writing was my center of gravity.

Mentors can suggest to you what more you are capable of.

“Your mother’s fine,” Giuseppe said. “We’re all completely fine.”

They’d developed Santa’s entire system, had written the code.

That Hawaiian shirt is the first thing Ratso’s owned that he hasn’t stolen.

Who mind loved would not rather be loved body too. Since all is all.

Third Place

All that existed was Louisa’s beauty—or Khin’s refashioning of it.

Dad doesn’t believe I’m beauty queen material. I believe in myself.

I am going to relate to you the most lamentable love affair of my life.

With your hands in the air you held an infant tightly, trying to save it.

Mistaking water hemlock for parsley, I die hours later in the hospital.

Her body had become a scale, a device for measuring grief.

I read that poem twice, didn’t I? I must have wanted to hear it again.

Salve, salve, Regina. As the song ends, he folds into the fabric seat.

It was hard to know what memories or images had marked him.

Sometimes you weren’t a good daughter, the mother says.

Cheer and cheer and cheer she sings a song on nesting wings.

Most people come to Africa because they are drawn to its misery.

As our friendship declined into torture, the prairie grew hotter.

She wags her index finger so furiously that I’m certain it will snap off.

The dead men don’t look like themselves or anybody else.

It’s a girls’ college we’re going to, but all the guys know Polly’s name.

How bright and eager they appear, how ready to get started.

Elinor had loved a man. The journey’s purpose was that she might forget.

The psychology in climbing is to look ahead, but that trick was little help.

About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters.

Heaven preserve me from the Epidemic of a Proud Ignorance!

The horse is in the air, her legs withdrawn, a diamond shape.