"American Royals" and "Jenny"

Kathy doesn’t know the band but she wants to know me more. 

Like many youngsters of the era, this author lived in fear that these bees would descend upon his town by the thousands and sting everyone to death. 

I wandered around Sam Goody, more likely keeping track of my ABCs than taking inventory of the musical selections I passed row after row. It was December 1996, the beginning of another bleak winter in

You look like a zombie who’s just seen a ghost, the mirror mouthed back. 

to Mrs. Burrell

When Ms. Griffin was fired, my mother said 
it was because she was too gay, too flamboyant 
for our small charter school. I mourned her 
ombre dreadlocks and her laugh that swept

She didn’t look mad, but she was something. She was moving slow-fast like a cat, something I’d never witnessed, like I could feel how fast she wanted to go but wasn’t going.

Nights shipwrecked / in nameless wanting

The city a floating glass 
garden / to be lost in

Banished from the blinked-out streets / we put 
our dollar-store faith / in the claw machine

wager

Now, you book an appointment on a whim. But it’s not a whim. You’ve been thinking about this for a while.

All around him the congregation erupted. Tears of rapture. Hugs of friendship. Compassionate embraces. Passionate kisses. Erotic caresses.

Previously on...
Prologue

Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie) and John Anderson; A.W. Merrick (Jeffrey Jones) and Wynonna; Whitney Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) and Trace Atkins; General Samuel Fields (Franklin Ajaye) and Kenny Chesney; Tom Nuttall (Leon Rippy) and Aaron Tippin

Morning smells like horseradish,
dogshit. The squat toilet in my uncle’s house:
too cramped to hold

a breathing thing. My cousin, barely older
than three, calls me “姐姐, 姐姐,” as she

Are you in my head? Do you know what goes on up here? Do you know what’s preceded all that goes on up here? 

Like the other day, when we got into a fight about who was the luckier between the two of us to have found the other.

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.