Mathias LaFleur: the first Eagles Got Talent contestant ever clapped off stage.

The narrator of Ben Lerner’s 10:04 goes to see The Clock at Lincoln Center in New York. The Clock was at Lincoln Center from July 13, 2012 to August 1, 2012, but in the book’s acknowledgements, Lerner explains that time in the novel does not always correspond to time in the world. This creates a sort of magical New York where Occupy Wall Street, The Clock, and Hurricane Irene can all be happening practically at the same time.

One time, a pair of blue Tattersalls, two Sigma Chis home from Clemson. Two, again: faded blackwatch shorts and a stretchy lavender thong, smelled like Obsession. Just that one time.

Corbin was listening to Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s T.R.O.Y. and thinking of Trina McIver when shot inside the bodega on Fourth Street.

On stage my son forgets his line and my husband Sam whispers “The winters were hard for the settlers”

In my country, says the bulkier, pastier, frowning president, journalism students are admitted to university according to their eloquence in abbreviating my biography.

I’m just gonna say it. Invisalign is bullshit.

Midway through the school year one of the kids in one of the other sixth grade classes hung himself, so we couldn’t call the game we played in the mornings ‘suicide’ after that. 

Parker’s mental damn busts open the second he sinks a cleat into the batter’s box.  

It was the summer of Monica Lewinsky and Mark McGwire and Armageddon. I was on a short business trip to Philadelphia—a handholding, as it is known in the office. I was sent, via Amtrak, to coddle

When I first met Dawn, I didn’t know what a lexicographer was. I had to look it up. Later I admitted I hadn’t even realized that people still made dictionaries.

“Of course they do,” Dawn

Pauline wanted to correct him. He should have said catcher. That's the one who squats. 

Otherwise you'll end up with a mouthful of husk shards. 

It is the last inning of the last game of a mediocre season for a mediocre team. 

Season 6, season finale: Hank Moody attends AWP. Moral tragedy ensues.

48 hours after his mysterious disappearance Lowe uploaded the first of many filter-less photographs to come to his, once deactivated and now reactivated, Instagram account. 

But this whole thing is wrong. Your hair is uneven around the edges where you cut it this morning. 

She wore a gold necklace that read “Boy Toy” and she stroked it lustily as she spoke. It was the 80s and everyone’s taste sucked. 

I was sitting at the edge of her mattress. We barely looked at each other. She would have been in Chemistry if we hadn’t skipped third period. I would have been in English II.

Your fingers fumble with the seatbelt’s metal latch. You say you don’t feel safe. That safety is a bigger lie than Jesus.

Someone else is waiting by the door. I’m brushing dust off my jacket getting over to her, but really looking at my hand, which hasn’t stopped shaking in the past minute. I think I’m excited.

An excerpt from WASTE: a novel

Elvira Moon loved bowling. For four straight years, her team, the Blooming Broads, dominated the women’s league, decimating all opponents until Big Tina quit to start her own team, the South Side Splitters, with that bitch Claudia from Couscous or whatever country she’d arrived from in a banana crate. 

She gave my dog lighter fluid.

She said my dog didn’t drink it because she put it there.

The dog drank it because it was an accident.

Whenever Amanda and I get into a fight she calls me poor. She tells me that, in my country, they sell nappy-headed dark skin girls like me for 20 silver coins and a healthy goat. 

I noticed a tall man in front of me with a long umbrella hanging from his arm. He was watching the priest and listening. When we began the preparations for communion, the tall man threw himself onto his knees.