You are obsolete. The cashier in your neighborhood’s grocery store is obsolete.  The typesetter—who placed each individual letter for the headlines of the morning paper—is obsolete. Tollbooths barely require someone to stand sentry in the middle of the highway to collect coins anymore and soon enough lasers will replace surgeons in operating rooms as well.

She had different stories for different people.

“Lost it in a hunting accident.”

“Shot off in the war.”

“Born without it.”

“Bandsaw.”

“Woodchipper.”

“Gangrene.”

Each

I imagine Temperance Brennan's annual gynecological exam might go something like mine: If you're not finding time to eat, you must not be having a lot of... Are you seeing anyone right now?

* * *

I lie night after night
With the only one I hate more than myself

Artisanal meth is amazing

How we pretended to be other people for fun: “Hi, what’s your name?” she asked. “Bill,” I said. “Bill, huh? I can think of a lot of words that rhyme with Bill.”

And here comes this very small girl – this fairly attractive small girl – getting real thug with me suddenly. Suddenly thug. This petite white girl getting suddenly thug. And she physically pushed me saying “Wrong fucking pile!” She was angry about this pile. 

If one person can take from this that it is not about privilege, it is not fiction versus poet, it is none of the internet fashions of complaint and it is not anonymous (even though I am any-goddamn-pleasing-way anonymous with or without my fucking name) ...

My fault for side-stepping the usual male pretense at sensitivity or smug confidence of manipulation. I’ve saved it all for this fucking Lish frottage of a sentence.

It’s a hot day in Oklahoma, and Kurt Russell has been working hard. At what, we’re not entirely sure. There may have been a throwaway line of dialogue about fixing cars or mending fences or digging

“I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.” 

-- Anton Chekhov

“When I dance, the stage shakes with my weight.

The whitetail flit across the road,
tails raised in greeting or surrender,
a herd—a small stampede—crossing
this rural Iowa highway, emerging
from fields of green, leaping
the cable guard

Shane Jones’s Crystal Eaters begins as a countdown. The chapter numbers start at 40 and irregularly drop to zero by the book’s end. The page numbers recede against conventions too, and the

Betty crossed her yard and our street and my yard holding a bundle of mail.

This Moment at the Peticolas Brewing Company When Chris and I Thought That Becoming Brewers Was the Only Way to Find Meaning in Our Otherwise Meaningless Lives

It looked like it was

The Light Bulb

Man did not get the idea for the light bulb from those cartoons when someone gets an idea.

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe’s last words were not

TRIDENT LISP

When tenderness runs out there is tenderness,
Jonathan says.  We hand-in-handed but days
ago to the hiss of ocean spray, the salutation
and valediction of the sea a frothing

It’s called The Panda Barn, where you can go and it’ll just be rows and rows of beds

Sean Kilpatrick: If you and I could be said to exist outside ye old literary camps, and I think our flags remain hygienic because I don’t leave the house and you’re too good at what you do, also

I snapped back into it at the bar. I’d been there the whole time, of course, but I hadn’t really acknowledged it, and I took in the room and the situation like crawling out of a ditch. Billy was

ZAZEN AT THIRTY-SIX

When I was twenty, Emily called me
from her dorm room. She wanted to know
if I believed in God, something about
trading an Iowa village population
three grand for a

The Day Shirley Temple Died

I remembered I was a bad mother. I called up my son, a bellboy in a fancy Las Vegas hotel, I wanted to apologize, patch things up. Redemption is a thing I believe