I hold myself in the plank position. The little dog sits on the rug watching. It’s a very expensive rug. She’s not supposed to be here. He’s up on the purple couch and I do not know what he is

“you’re bad at finishing beverages that aren’t alcoholic,” you told me

My neighbor let his Rottweiler roam without a leash again and I’m an inch away from planting razor blades inside my tomatoes.

I first saw Todd Field’s Tár in a packed theatre in Bloomfield Township, Michigan with a crowd
of mostly middle-aged and above upper to upper-middle class New Yorker-tote-bag liberal types.
During the first 20 or so minutes of the film I found myself annoyed, fidgeting in my seat and
groaning as I sat through the titular EGOT winner’s conversation with Adam Gopnick.

When I was a younger man in my early 20s slumming about Watauga County in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina living off of sacks of potatoes, Top Ramen, and 50 cent day-old bread from Jimmy John's in the midst of a youthful exploration of self-discovery, my primary means of spiritual sustenance being $2 40 oz bottles of malt liquor, my relationships with scoundrels, endearing friends, an abundance of hedonism, a lack of responsibility, a poor boy’s decadence, bright-eyed women, and Kamel Red cigarettes, Elizabeth Ellen was the first literary publisher to accept any work that I’d submitted. This was circa 2014. Felt that she was the Hackmuth to my Great Bandini.

I was zipped up to my nose in a sleeping bag, inhaling moist breath mingled with olfactory ghosts of campfires and wild sex past.

We paid the cover charge and stood among the young homosexuals of Columbus.

You must stop dating
physicists, that sere barnacling across
the cold, leeward faces of rocks.

writing fiction in which people google things,
suffering in a very abstract way
trying very hard to shut the fuck up & failing

At the head of the conference table sat a man scrolling on his phone, whom Michael intuited was the leader of this secret society. 

Becca, Ernie’s wife, estranged wife most of the novel until finally she is his ex-wife at the end, based on the author’s, based on Aaron’s, ex-wife, Elizabeth Ellen, who is, oddly, metally, writing these words, typing them into a Word doc at nine in the morning

I ask him if the smoke was from the engine fires
or the buildings collapsing — or both
of course it was both 
We pass Emily Ratajkowski and I try to run back to get a look at her face

-Editor at a literary journal attempting to be good, moral ppl (see: 1990s Christian Right)

I never wanted to run this ship. Frankly, I’d rather spend my time writing.

The other thing Belle did
Was burn three holes in my thigh
With her cigarette
Revenge for the chaos I’d caused

He had a little radio, and on the mornings it snowed, he listened over and over to the lists of school closings until he knew them by heart: Kellerville area, Longstead area, Mount Holly area, all the outlying place-names, all the Our Lady of’s. Sometimes there was only a two-hour delay, and he wondered what it must be like, to have the boon of two extra hours like that.

Mouth like the

moon. Until death,

be excited. Déjà vu

you’ve never had.

Above the tree line, the sky has turned the color of a day-old bruise. The reception has begun to clear. Whichever uncle had parked his motorcycle in the driveway was now gone.  
 

Our dad knew about Surface-to-Air missiles. Our mother knew what we told her.

Now I bake bread to stay busy, to not think about dying.

I’m trying to lose my ego before Coachella.

I, I, I, I, the angel speaks herself

And sure, not all moths were so blindly abiding, but that these grand ideas remained a possibility was often enough to console or comfort the moth. You see, the moth, culturally, was keenly aware of toxic attachments—meaning, they were rigidly open to all possibilities in an effort not to favor one delusion over another.

I finger a ring of keys and wonder what doors they might unlock.

He tells me he bought an ex girlfriend a $500 original copy of The Bell Jar. I say oh wow.

Celebrating the publication today of this year's Best Debut Short Stories: The PEN America Dau Prize, including—among many other amazing and wonderful and brilliant stories—our very own "Them Bones"