My son is obsessed with points.

We were clowns playing death metal. That was our gimmick: whiteface makeup, red rubber ball noses, rainbow-colored wigs. We called ourselves Puke Bucket, but in his review of our first big gig

Due to a clerical error, 265 students registered for my English 101 course. 

First, he ARRIVED – like the swans at Capistrano, or aliens in the desert, or, more likely, a flaming dessert.

“Who is that?” my friend Noelle said, poking me in the ribs; her inflection, a

You don't know it yet, but I gave you bad directions, and now I can't find you. For this, I am truly, truly sorry.

We’re all going to be late, for everything, and the people we keep waiting will add this to their mental list of evidence that we are not careful or observant or accountable.

After thirty days in rehab, you are “coined out.”

Dress Code

I’ve got this friend who’s passionate about dress codes. Her name is Sharon. Most of the jobs I’ve had, when it’s come time for a boss to enforce the dress code, they do so

When I stay over at Amelia’s there is a poster of Devils Tower over her bed and we trace the volcanic neck with our fingertips instead of sleeping. I give Amelia a Xanax and floss between each of her teeth.

texas was underwater, florida had been evacuated, and the eagle creek blaze—started by fireworks in September of the hottest Summer on record—filled the skies for hundreds of miles with the forest’s ashes.

A sister in place of a father wasn’t an exchange. I’d had twelve years with a father and none with a sister, and I’d preferred it that way.

I protested with my body, such as it was. I felt the need to explain. “I’m staging a protest.” I fluttered hard. The foe smelled of gas.

It’s enough just to know that they’re out there. .

People became a mob and the mob circled her, gnashed their teeth and lashed their arms as if to say, Dance! Dance! Dance! They wanted a concert! Another song! Dance, Connie, dance!

Tongue hasn’t left its .276 square foot efficiency studio apartment in three weeks. To discourage visitors due to lack of space, this space was rented. Tongue is going through a break-up. This

There Never Was a Mainland

We burned fast that summer. The boats had stopped coming. The water kept us there. That’s the thing about islands.

We bathed at low tide. We ate shells and weeds.

In the bag the child swam and twirled and stopped long enough to meet the eyes of the camera. 

My sheets got dripped on. We didn’t finish all of it. I fell asleep with the taste of it dried around my lips. Sweet, for a little.

On November 13, 2012, Hugo Dos Santos awoke shortly after 1 am with an urgent need to urinate. He got up from bed and took two steps out into the hallway when he saw three small creatures in

The sun is a dwarf star 93 million miles away. The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a spiky glass appendage that sprouts out of the Royal Ontario Museum’s original brick in downtown Toronto, was unveiled on August 5, 2007. 

It was getting dark outside as me and Naoki walked down the paved footpath of my West Shinjuku neighborhood to the subway. It was rainy, and there were concrete hippos and pigs, and other rusted

It doesn’t make the sound that you think it would make. I mean, I figured it would be loud, or top-heavy. But it sounded like almost nothing, like water dripping from a shower faucet three rooms

In this one, nothing will happen, like in life, unlike in life, where everything happens.

They sat on the grassy bank, clothes clinging to their wet bodies, watching the river flow. A few raindrops splashed on the surface, tiny dimples rushed away downstream. Neither of them bothered to point out that it was going to rain.

I stopped drawing stars on my student’s papers. Stars are dying suns shouting out “goodbye!” as they disappear. Why should that signify goodness?

I discovered distant Facebook friends—dead from