John’s hands are on the wheel, very still, and he’s looking straight ahead at the dark yellow lines of Route 66.

This story is a fresh take on the proverbial phrase: go the extra mile for someone else. 

It starts like this, the saddest story I know does. It starts with me and it starts with my son.

Jack Beauregard divides his time into zeroes and ones. He divides his time between mundane tasks and the question of whether he is worth loving. 

We go to a bar for lunch that serves free candy.

I got a flat tire last month and my life spiraled out of control just a half mile from the rest stop.

Jared punches like dang. Gouges, arm-bars. Breaks windows at theme parties.

For the past month Wrat, a man removed from the dogtooth of language, had been hearing a scratching, needling noise clip the outmost walls.

On the job site one morning they found a dead squirrel. There was no indication of what had killed it.

When you lost the third finger, things got out of hand. I didn't know what to say to make it better, and so I made it worse

When my team scores a touchdown, I have a few seconds in the spotlight to do my dance, to captivate the crowd. I pretend in front of my flock that I don’t enjoy it but I do. I am more vain than I let on

And I would blush and kind of lightly touch his shoulder, saying oh, Robert. Just Robert, because why shouldn’t we be on a first name basis? I’ve read all his poems—I know the man

Mama Vincenzo’s Ristorante Italiano is located in hell

Bill and Mary were leaving because Mary felt old, when a woman’s hand fell on his shoulder.

Two weeks after the scientist’s freak exposure, a man in black arrived at his front step. It was the weekend, and the man in... more

You told Mrs. Miller you had to make up a clarinet lesson so you needed to leave class early and she believed you, the old bat, even... more

The cousin had called my thesis advisor and said something like, “Hey, film professor cousin, can you do this film for us?” and my thesis advisor was like, “Hey, no. But I know a guy who is still unemployed four months after graduation and is about to get evicted.”

We spent that summer on Dad's couch trying not to move, because if we didn’t move we wouldn’t spend

Her first reaction was to laugh: "That's so like you, Camilla, to lose an entire car." 

When I turned to face you. I knew I had to face you.

It’s clear that most of these students hate Sal, Dean, and Kerouac.

There is an eerie glow to the hollowness of bark that has been stripped of its leaves and fruit

When was the last time she ran? At all? As a real kid in bare feet in grass at her grandparents’ house.

At least I was alone, I tell myself. There’s no one to miss the worlds I destroy but me.

She has a pliant diction, and always after speaking to her mother her accent takes on the squished together sing-song of Spanish. When I... more