A tendril of smoke dissipated above us. She made an opening in her hands, revealing a little frog. Its throat pumped rapidly.

For Caite’s Sweet 16 we get a couple rooms at the Motel 6 on Cerrillos, not the one downtown with the outdoor pool, the one on the southside between the strip club and the mall, and everyone can pay

Collective Soul have always sucked, but Everclear was once the only band in the world.

Case VIII

Mlle X, a fifteen-year-old girl, spent several months, during the winter of 1883, undergoing hydrotherapy at Longchamps

On the contrary: I wanted people to see my spectacle. I wanted them to never forget it. Z had wondered: what if the joy of experiment dies with joy itself? If the relationship ends, what if we’re done with it forever?

His subconscious deemed them too short, or not steep enough, or their grass was flecked with yellow and brown. He had succeeded in agitating his appetite and wondered what he would have for dinner.

People hung around outside of convenience stores with their hands over their mouths blowing smoke. Stereos played loud Christmas music.

I know brain damage.

When I was 22, my mother was excited for the first day at my new job, but not so much that she couldn’t wait to tell me about the demon that had attacked her in the night. 

Priorities.

They held

Exchanging one anya-nyelv, mother-tongue, for another is like 
nibbling salted peanuts at the sticky bar top,
unplanned but eventual for a bilingual migrant. 

The other mother-
nyelv tongue is

Hank sucked what was left of his cigarette back in one pull and flicked it into the alley.  The hot light of the ember cartwheeled through the air before disappearing into the snow.

Because of its hardiness and tendency to escape cultivation, these non-native wisterias are considered invasive species in many parts of the United States, especially the Southeast, due to their

Sometimes I stop talking to my boyfriend for no reason.

Dan Dority (W. Earl Brown) & Travis Tritt; Trixie (Paula Malcomson) & Natalie Maines; Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) & Alan Jackson; Calamity Jane Cannery (Robyn Wiegert) & Gretchen Wilson; Johnny Burns (Sean Bridgers) & Dierks Bentle

The lyrics say "He never never lied." Is that possible? Or even desirable?

I write this from a subterranean lair packed tight with things: books, CDs, LPs, cassettes, an old laptop or two, and a pile of baseball memorabilia. This is where I do my writing, on a desk among all

I didn’t know how long it’d been since he’d last eaten. I also knew he needed water.

“Hm,” Yoda grunted, considering the foyer, it’s openness, how exposed he was, and what he could do about it. “Hm,” he grunted again.

The last night of the trip, you stay with one of his friends in Vallecitos, New Mexico.  

Soon sunlight would be replaced by nighttime.  I felt this, the same way my grandma could feel the rain coming on.  

When my mother built me
again, she did not wait for sobs

to pass. She left clasps undone
then wept in her bedroom.

I tried to reach for the gown
but my fingers mumbled back hair

into metal

What's It Like?

           We have made unspeakable mean indescribable:
           it really means nasty.
                                   -Paul Fussell

You don’t mean nasty. You mean

He tells them, pays for the burgers and, as they drive to the mall, as if to encourage them, a general addressing his troops, he tells them about fights with broken bottles, about fighting the black kids because he was white, the Italian and Polish kids because he was Jewish, the rich kids because he was poor.

I don't notice anything when the television is on.  A bomb could go off in my kitchen and I wouldn't notice the wreckage until the next commercial break.

the man who touches you also touches
the other women of the city, this special
man who you chose to be your first man
even after you’ve met so many men who
wanted to know you as a woman