I am glad to report that the Great Iowa State Fair Haiku Contest was a roaring success. 

I smile into the mirror. There is lipstick on my front teeth. I don’t rub it off.

I have trouble sleeping in open spaces, I tell Saul. There is a blanket on the floor of my closet.

She didn’t spend her senior year serving soft serve and saving for a bus ticket to Los Angeles when she turned eighteen to end up riding a tandem bike around the park with some guy whose shorts were too short.

One summer morning, Lyle Condy was cycling down the steep, straight hill of Magdalene Road in the city of Cambridge. His bike had a bell in strict accordance with local ordinances regarding cycling. 

Months ago. Here it is me at the grocery getting flowers and deli meats and here’s the little boy with his face soft and fluffy and pink. 

He was at the window. I heard the tap-tap-tap.

After, we slunk back to Mema’s Alaskan Taco Hut and I crawled into a booth and ordered with two fingers like we were stuck in a Mad Men b-reel. I couldn’t see my hand held up, but from this

“I don’t like how her flesh looks,” my daughter tells me. According to Phoebe, this woman has the flesh of a winter peach.

“We made out once,” my sister says. I thought “I was in love with him for a night.”

My daughter Lisbeth checks Missy’s gums for bleeders. “Sometimes the damage done takes generations to make itself known,” she says, nodding along with her words, agreeing with herself. 

By now Lena was supposed to be the version of herself at whom people looked twice, and whom Alec missed, at home, now that they lived together. But she was still just herself, in stockings and hoodie, her face half-done. 

At first Margaret went around whispering about the rape. The rape? Her rape? Did she own it? Did she have to keep it? Did she share it? 

Don’t know whether I was really desperate for weed or just plain curious about that dude, Duffy, but for whatever reason, I found myself back at his trailer, on the couch, watching TV and smoking his shit.

Molly liked that the Museum of Light was honest.  Inside every light is a seed of darkness, one interpretive sign began.  It is light’s job to prevent that seed from blooming.  

No one should become a new parent at my age.

1. you never wanted to be the kind of person who balked when people entered your home without taking off their shoes

No one even realized Plain could make such a comeback. Years before, it tapered off in grocery stores. Chips. Donuts. Even Coca-Cola. All were taken over by ranch, chocolate, lime. 

Out by the park, I say, I’ve got your blood in me, and you look at me funny, like you are waiting for this to be another mediocre joke, and it is, somehow, but I don’t know the punchline yet. 

“Isn’t there something called ‘Pizza’?” I whispered to my girlfriend one night, awake from a dream; she kissed my forehead, her breath heavy with the sweet smell of cilantro, and sent me back to sleep.

When I told you I wanted to file a police report for our missing love, you turned to me with your best impression of a blank page. 

I feel blessed. I thank God with a capital G for my success.

The bank took the car but they didn't take my legs, so this morning I stole the neighbor kid's bike and pedaled into town. 

At dawn on Saturday, our powerlifting group arrived at the locker room to try on singlets.

First of all I want to thank you for accepting my friend request.  Out of all our graduating class of 1992, you were the only one to do so.