The Germans call it the downfall. The French call it sleep. The Polish just give you vague directions.

It’s also the story of a horse, which is a word but also a kind of animal.

It was tiny, the prefab. A neat little one-room bungalow with a kitchenette along one wall and a tiny separate bathroom and the saleswoman told Greg that, in a pinch, he could move in as soon as it was delivered.

All I wanted to do was tell some jokes at an open mic and look what I had to go through. I was running for my life.

5. 'Jacob', whose frameless bed I’d crawl out of at 4:30 am to get to work.

 I looked down and saw, in place of the disorder there had been, the penis and testicles of a small boy sprouting from me, growing incrementally as I ran, at about the rate of one year per second. 

Did it bother him that his only erotic recourse that evening would be to pretend masterpiece on her face? Yes. 

Katie keeps a pet duck in her Echo Park garden house. We sit on the edge of her tub and she sings, 'You are so beautiful to me,' the Joe Cocker song.

and yes, I know how everyone beats up on StevenHawking, that he doesn’t do his thinking for himself, he had one good idea and that was that

We stood there, not knowing what to do, so he lowered himself to the floor to show me how he slept.

“Don't you get cold?”

“Only when it's windy.”

“You're in Wyoming.” 

“I'll show

Babies from the Dry Counties became a fated élite. From the creamiest of breasts to organic kale pudding and Montessori kindergarten.

We were trying to figure out what a deer's home is called. A thicket? A glen?

The trouble with paddling is your arms get tired. I tell this to the girls but they don’t listen.

Call brother Henry in Louisville. Tell him to call baby sister Clementine in Augusta.

Once, all foxes were silver.

1.   It was always ice. Ice: a word like a shard of glass shived in his ribs. The dark plain he was bound to travel. His paramour, his nightmare, his lost thumb. His vice.

You are a diagnostician, alert for symptoms: ridged fingernails, yellow eye-whites, swollen knuckles, broken capillaries. 

Our town’s ordinance—passed in 1862—named the first-born son of each family Zebulon.

My ex, Mark, calls me at two in the morning to tell me he’s figured out what’s causing his problems.

When one didn’t work, turned to another one. Turned to one who could be spun.

Turned and spun.

That the language of business.

What other language would he—would any of

Thank you for agreeing to serve as my culture champion. I appreciate you.

Defenestrated again. On the way down I regret that it isn’t raining.

Ed's note: This story originally ran on Hobart in 2010. In celebration of the upcoming publication of Andrew Brininstool's book, Crude Sketches Done in Quick Succession, in which this story

Four decades after breaking off our high school romance, we found each other again, I, Phillip, twenty-five years into my second marriage, and I, Lily, divorced.

Toby was blind. He was different. We left him alone.