On the drive home, I waited in the dark of the third-row seat for Z to act, reach for my hand or kiss my cheek. But he wouldn’t do anything until college, until I cornered him in the bathroom at a Halloween party and forced the space between us to shrink.
Even when I had my brief zoology phase, in elementary school, I always preferred mammals.
The dog ran alongside me for about twenty yards, then I hit it. Or maybe it hit me. I still don’t know. I felt sick.
“This one’s kind of a dud,” he said, turning the page. “It’s fine, but I’m not sure where it goes.”
“That’s like me on this path,” she said.
“It’s really not.”
In a long baseball season, there’s always the question of whether any one game matters
Read Kevin Mahler's Introduction to his ongoing 5-part "Portrait Series Paralleling Characters in HBO’s Deadwood with Contemporaneous Pop Country Musicians," and check out previous parts 1 and 2 and 3
Tom Cruise is one of life’s winners. He felt the need, the need for speed, and singlehandedly saved America from those Soviet planes, or something—honestly you never understood what was going on in the second half of Top Gun. In A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson told Tom Cruise he couldn’t handle the truth, but Jack Nicholson was quite wrong.
Horace Guy Womack was in the employ of four different Major League teams across five seasons, a serviceable bullpen righty who lost as many games as he won, but managed to keep his lifetime ERA a
I will take an infestation, but only if it won’t spread.
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
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.
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?
