On your way home from work,
you stop at a liquor store for smokes.

Our friend Stacy Kranitz, who is a (super talented) photographer, invited Scott and me to go to Skatopia’s 20th Anniversary Bowl Bash in June. Of course, we said yes. Here is

Sometimes my brother would randomly run through the house saying the outsiders sat perched in the trees, they had guns aimed at every window in the house, and we’d run to the basement and whisper our last words to each other in the hiding cabinets 

Being human is about: what’s unobtainable today? 

When I met Magic on 188th and Valentine, he pulled a quarter from behind my ear.  Most guys didn’t try that hard. 

We were sitting on the shores of the Atlantic, waiting for the wind to change and the black flies to get blown back out to sea when the plane went down.

legs apart, wrists willing: I am teaching myself to love sasha grey

A few minutes before tip-off, Gorilla stretches in the locker room—he’s no longer allowed to stretch on the court, not since an activist group called it a prolonged obscene gesture—and he is beset by

Kilpatrick on the artist’s political responsibilities (these are apparently multiple): Hate has more borders than I can muster into the capability of a vision. That’s why I scream in short bursts. 

for Rachel Corso

Have you tried all our salsa flavors before?
This is mild (not medium), this is spicy, this is verde
(That means green), this is volcanic, this is you

Not listening.

“Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.” – Kurt Vonnegut

I met

Sometimes she fears her new husband is her old husband. In her mind the two take up the same space and linger in the same places. 

My new friend interrupted me to say, “You seem like you live like a real artist.”
My new friend had already been twice published by The New Yorker.
I thought maybe she had confused me with herself.

For all the hours we’ve spent with strangers, all the conversations and shared stories, we ask no one’s name—until now. 

Kneeling on cement, the lifelike nutz dangling in her face, Daniela tried to work the screwpin out of the anchor shackle, but she was unable to unjam it from the lughole, her press-ons flexing dangerously against the hitch. 

There are five categories for hurricanes; most of the buildings here were built to withstand categories one and two.

Let the okra go to waste, steal oranges from the
corner store. I'll tell you that I love you like I've
loved no one else. Our bodies are made to be
useful, move fast. The fastest man in

I walk every day until I stop talking to myself. 

No one is going anywhere, he says. You will sleep here tonight.

Karl Barth

let's forget the time we fought

and just say

that i have a specific kind of fear

it happens

sometimes 

when i am in the club

thinking about the pieces of my

"And look, I can just barely fit my arm through the wound. It's not that big."

Two teenagers are living in my house this summer, and neither has read The Catcher in the Rye. They’ve taken over the basement, binge-watching shows on Netflix and referring to Instagram as

Pierce Brosnan only has so much time left. He doesn’t know it yet, but this will be his last James Bond film. While it will gross almost half a billion dollars worldwide, it won’t take long for Die

The card reads Leo Schwezeger, MD. The only other print is a phone number and the phrase If you have to ask...