Mothers and fathers lean in door­ways to keep any­one from for­get­ting them. What hap­pens when a per­son­al­i­ty can’t find its way back? Let’s say I promise to look for myself in the con­cerned or dep­re­cat­ing glances of oth­ers. Dread fil­ters through the clipped words lost in dwin­dling lung space. A whirlpool of defi­ant air is rav­en­ous and ter­ror­izes the mind which wears the fab­ric of the intestines –more

Lester was lament­ing the state of things we’d got­ten our­selves into. “We’ve missed too many boats.” I could see his brain work­ing over­time in there, like his skull was full of pant­i­ng egrets. He wor­ried about any­thing, like the recent hole in Canada. This was how life had become. “You know some­thing,” Lester said, “I don’t care,” mov­ing his lips like the wings of a small but­ter­fly. –more

The woman has walked this path cir­cling the reser­voir many times. She stays in a sim­ple but stur­dy cab­in near the base of the moun­tain when she’s up from the city. Today feels like autumn, and when she pulled into the park­ing lot off the high­way, there were only two oth­er cars: a green sedan and a white truck. To get to the head of the path, she had to hike uphill for a mile and a half. The dirt –more

I am writ­ing about a man. When I check in on him, he is stand­ing under an old-timey sign that reads LIQUOR. I won­der if he should wear his hair long, and then sud­den­ly he does. He wears a suit and has a dim­pled cheek.

He goes to the desert and strums his gui­tar among the cac­ti. The Joshua trees uproot them­selves, march over to him, and cir­cle him in a fun­ny walk. Stars whiz through the night. He –more

I am in a state of dis­ap­pear­ance, back inside Ohio. I drove all night. The car stalled before I could ram it through the perime­ter fence. The Great Lakes have been cor­doned off. The last of the world’s drink­able water. I can­not see it through the dark, but I can smell it: fishgut, bleach, and exhaust. I have hon­ey­comb welts from press­ing against the perime­ter fence, a bruise on my arm swirling –more

The Mark IV sits behind and just to the right of the Lodge Pin Hotel. I’m in the park­ing lot between the two, sway­ing a step to the right and then a step to the left. It’s nice the way alcohol’s been work­ing on me faster since I went back to drink­ing a few weeks ago. I used to buy a thir­ty pack of beer a day. Within a month, my tongue went yel­low and had a lay­er of yeast buildup about a half –more

Four friends and co-work­ers, Jenny, Elissa, Mira, and Fran, are sup­posed to attend an impor­tant con­fer­ence, which takes place in a town rough­ly a three-hour dri­ving dis­tance from where they live. To save on gas mon­ey, they nat­u­ral­ly decide to ride togeth­er. The route they must take is made up pri­mar­i­ly of one long stretch of high­way. At 5:00 AM, they pile into an old, mus­tard-col­ored sta­tion wag­on –more

1.

Eddie sat down first. He had his legs straight out and his elbows down. He low­ered the rest of his body and felt the mois­ture from the grass through the back of his shirt. A box of cig­a­rettes was passed around. I didn’t take one. Voices approached and we couldn’t tell who it was until they reached the atmos­phere of light our col­lect­ed phone screens pro­duced. We opened our cir­cle for the new­com­ers –more

A young father returns from the yard. He has plant­ed two new pep­per bush­es, to replace the ones wast­ed by flood­wa­ters. His spade unearthed a bone, a dirty thing that resem­bled a knuck­le. With his liv­ing bones, he han­dles the tiny exhuma­tion, inspects it, won­ders briefly about it, throws it in the trash. He mus­es, pri­vate­ly, about his own jawbone—where will it be after he can no longer say, this –more

I yearn for a scrap of good news
Like the city longs for tulips
To final­ly raise their mag­nif­i­cent faces to the sun,
Shining and twirling like beau­ty queens

With blind­ing, con­ceit­ed smiles.
They know how much we need them.
They can see the detri­tus clut­ter­ing
Our city side­walks and our lives.

They know March teas­es us
With its cru­el, whip­ping winds
While we eager­ly wait for tulips to bloom.
–more

The Bastard and the Bishop

Most of the city is underground—that’s how cold it is here, great gal­leries, com­plex, rein­forced earth­en walls, apart­ments tiered four lev­els down, some­times five—the under­ground riv­er bisect­ing the city, lit blue or yel­low or green to denote neigh­bor­hoods, help drunk­en pas­sen­gers fer­ry­ing the riv­er find their way home. The build­ings that do rise from the sur­face –more

We shared DNA on a veg­etable pork roll in the Metropolitan muse­um café. I washed it down with two Prelief. He inquired what was up with the pills. I didn’t both­er to explain; he doesn’t have empa­thy for the sick. I’d seen a vio­let bump toe in a dis­play case of mum­mies. It seemed odd and hap­pen­stance. I imag­ined fan­ci­ful stories—perhaps the curate had for­got­ten it in his rush. Perhaps he –more

Tired from shop­ping at the mall, my purse get­ting heavy, I took a rest on a new sofa near the up esca­la­tor.  A woman engaged with her smart­phone sat at the oth­er end, speak­ing loud enough that I couldn’t ignore her side of the con­ver­sa­tion.  She and her hus­band had been tak­en to din­ner by a man who’d spent the evening ask­ing about them but say­ing lit­tle about him­self.  They had “an inkling” –more

Half Whole

His first Volkswagen was very beachy, its paint job fad­ed blue almost to white, the inte­ri­or stripped to bones. We had sex in the mid­dle of the night in the fal­low lot between ranch hous­es. I was always under­neath on the weedy ground. I dat­ed a physi­cist who smoked mar­i­jua­na to trudge through weeks of pro­gram­ming about sub­atom­ic par­ti­cles. There is no alter­na­tive med­i­cine. There are only –more

So you ask, “How could any­one so drop-dead gor­geous be afraid of mir­rors?”

I was like, I’m only sev­en­teen and my face is a mine­field of pim­ples (well, maybe only one big one) and my cheeks are this sucky red, almost like a rash. All I could think of was this girl named Rose, who all the boys called “Rosacea,” and who Alex Youngblood said had lip her­pes from going down on guys.

I was telling –more