1. When I was sixteen I wrote a poem that started: As the years press down, I will remember you.

2. I have no idea who I was talking about when I wrote that.

3. Which means, I guess, that I

Carl Harlon had a singular, stunning thought as he balanced himself against the carnival’s bright orange plastic storm fence: she is breaking my heart. He watched as she made her way through the

Rueben, since he is on acid and can do things like that, brings Venus right out of the painting that hangs in the bathroom at the organic café. Venus steps out and steps back in, several times, her

First he was on top and then she was on top and then he bent her over a chair and then she sat on the chair and pulled his head down. Then he was on top again and she pressed her feet into his back

I should put you on the plane. The plane you’ll take to the bus you’ll take to the car you’ll drive home. I should put you on that plane. 

Instead, I take you to the train. But the train does

I. The Way There
 

On the way there you notice the light again, the same light you’ve noticed ever since you got here, a light that seems stronger than light you’ve seen elsewhere, as though

She found me at the public auction house, a placard reading "613" displayed over my head. A jeweled egg hung from her left shoulder, crusted with rubies, diamonds, glinty stuff. "So what's your

Sometimes there is a freight train stopped on the tracks. The tracks split the town, dividing it into one half and the other. On the one side, there is school. On the other, there is the little

The honeymoon suite in the bed and breakfast had a Harley-Davidson theme. When the brochure said ‘a haven for bikers,’ we assumed Schwinn. Cycling was part of our life – Mason had done the Tour

Thurleen’s feet hurt. And her head hurt from Parmalee’s algebra homework. Her eyes hurt because she didn’t have the money to replace her glasses. Her heart hurt because Roy never said the three

Steve’s pretty sure the Mexicans stole it; serves him right for naming it Chiquita in the first place. But it was a beautiful plant, four feet high and barely fitting under the deck in his small

Dr. Nathaniel Underwood
President
Academy of Nineteenth Century Disease and Deviance (ANCDD)
131 Riverside Drive, Apt. 1B
New York, NY 10021


 

August 20, 2006

Dear Mr.

My current employer, The Wor(l)d Economist, sent me on assignment to interview Gandhi’s grandson, who was in exile on an unchartered island near Fiji. I was in a BarbaryTM skiff with a maniacal

1.

A cheap leather coat K’s father lent me when we were visiting and the weather turned cold. It had belonged to his brother, a cop, but had never been worn because the brother, as K’s father

There was a bump on his head, and that’s what made him crazy. That’s the story he tells whenever anyone asks about it, the Doctors, the Police, the Park People, the Guy Who Sort of Looked Like

At nearly 2am, I took my trumpet down to the ocean, slung down against my leg like a weapon. I live across the street. A last minute decision leaves my drink on the stove. I only have so many

You never know when you’ll turn the corner to find it staring you in the face. You might be on your way to dinner at the kosher restaurant at 9th and South when you’ll notice someone has painted a

The boy wore a powder blue tuxedo and he tap danced around the house in shiny shoes. He wiggled the long tail of his fancy suit. When a stranger, a soon-to-be-new-relative took his picture, he hid

In bed with the wife of a guy that I work with, and this isn’t the beginning of the story, but the end of it, and then she calls me a month later and says she’s pregnant. Says she’s left him, and

When Isabel Araya was born in the southern tip of the pampas, twenty-one years, three months, and seven days before she would hold Juan Diego’s warm hand in the candlelight of the church, the

Ernie peered over the dash with a cigarette in his left hand and a can of spiked Pepsi in his right, fingertips grazing the ribbed underbelly of the wheel as he steered. He and Blume were on the

"Now Mr. Nguyen, here, he could benefit from a little trip over to Harold's Running Bull. Quaff a few, soak up the local culture, and shake hands with the biggest griz ever shot down in this

At dinner your friend took your cell phone from your bag and took a photo of me and put your cell phone in your bag. Everyone noticed and I think everyone thought about it too but no one said

Melissa and I have been together for almost a month, descending through the center of Australia from Darwin near its north tip, sliding below the belly of the globe to Adelaide. Somewhere down the

And then somebody said the magic word. Whale. It echoed and bobbed up and down the beach, and into the dunes, where I was relieving Victoria of her secrets.

‘Whale,’ she hummed,