When I met Magic on 188th and Valentine, he pulled a quarter from behind my ear.  Most guys didn’t try that hard. 

A few minutes before tip-off, Gorilla stretches in the locker room—he’s no longer allowed to stretch on the court, not since an activist group called it a prolonged obscene gesture—and he is beset by

Sometimes she fears her new husband is her old husband. In her mind the two take up the same space and linger in the same places. 

Kneeling on cement, the lifelike nutz dangling in her face, Daniela tried to work the screwpin out of the anchor shackle, but she was unable to unjam it from the lughole, her press-ons flexing dangerously against the hitch. 

I walk every day until I stop talking to myself. 

The card reads Leo Schwezeger, MD. The only other print is a phone number and the phrase If you have to ask...

Worst thing I ever did I did when I was doing Hank’s cousin, Theresa. It was a crime of sloth, a crime of not-saying.

Golden Boy lived in a little house on our mantlepiece.

Oliver sat in the locker room, a towel tucked neatly around his waist, next to a Smithfield rep who was slicing open packages of hot dogs and wrapping them individually in foil. Oliver did not have

I am a woman of discipline, which is to say: I don’t act at random. But I once slept with a mindreader on a whim.

I’m to blame for every fake suicide this week. If anyone knocks at the door I shout the addresses of shut-ins until I hear footsteps. If the knocking continues I take my gun and start shooting through the walls.

Most nights he wakes to use the bathroom and in so doing wakes the dog, which in turn figures it might as well do the same.

I had runoff all over. I hadn’t escaped the heartland.

I’d pony up the midnight sun for a pulled pork sandwich.

My friends told me they’d introduce me to May, but only if I understood that she’d been through a lot and didn’t need any more bad things to happen to her.

His family was there. My family was there. My bouquet was made of flies. 

Nothing Works: 1

-New York City 2005

I should be through thinking about it. Ok, but I remember just going batshit, breaking up with Vanessa on the payphone. Hanging up, couple minutes,

I keep finding medium length blond hairs on old shirts I haven’t worn in two or three years. My hair is short and black, and my lover’s hair is long and brown. 

After the Bombing

Santa did not know how to react to the sight; he only stared. At the granite block, there were three rows filled with ten men, each of whom was Santa. The only thing that

Focus too much time on watching Amanda make cappuccinos.

In times of great dissatisfaction, you will occasionally find yourself dating two men.

I was afraid the security guards would stop us, but they just shrugged when I took the plane out and put it on the field.  One of them even said something nice like, “Whoa, that is a cool.”  I taxied it from the end zone; it took off and buzzed up into the sky. 

We’d do it with whatever was laying around: a jump rope, an extension cord, stray fistfuls of fishing line. Down in the basement, while the babysitter watched Spanish-language television in the living room, we pulled these things taut, secured wrists, ankles, and torsos to my father’s old recliner. Toby was a boy scout, so his knots were better than mine, but I was by far the more skillful interrogator.

I upended the bottle of Seagram’s gin I always carried with me to poetry readings and cut off my penis with Kemal’s X-ACTO knife.

I first called her “querida” via text, years after we both escaped that desperate city. She sent a smiley face in response. I smiled along.