to survive
tenacious teeth held their nerve

I didn’t have my brother Patrick’s phone number until after my parents had been in a car accident.

I was God’s favorite, once—enough
schoolgirl in me to make Mary
sweat. not a fall-from-grace, but something sweeter.
an unlit cigarette wedged between two
adolescent fingers; & the skin like

I painted my lips and fingers red the first time I was unfaithful. It was in college, with a girl with sharp orange hair who had a smile that said come. I never really liked her--she was arrogant and

The boy’s hair was like the sand. He looked good. They all did, bruiseless in the sun. Striped towels in primary colors lay beneath them, shovels and tilting turrets walled them in. Sonia cupped a

I’d spend the night there on Saturday nights, get up Sunday morning and drive to my church and preach. I didn’t find God because I wasn’t looking for him. I was looking for me but I didn’t find him either.

when i’m

on coke i feel like i’m

in cruel intentions but

i have the personality

of winona ryder in

girl, interrupted

If I forget to night shift my mac it’s tragic...

We can stand here / on the corner, arguing... 

The veteran second baseman
is fiddling with his glasses in the twilight: The calculated
third baseman is scanning over the crowd for his family...

Were this place to close, or burn, or fall, in an earthquake, down.
Were it to flood or be bulldozed to make way for the gray &
unmusical slab of an apartment building. Were it to be

Part 1 of 4
Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4

Apart from all these violent events, Raziel, De Kuff, and the other cult members have been moving between Jerusalem, Safed (site of the ancient

If you get this far, that means that things are all, more or less, going according to plan.

The story of religious mania and the story of political violence look very likely to converge on each other.  Having consciously elected the first, Lucas keeps being drawn, sometimes unwillingly, sometimes unwittingly, toward the other. Both feature his new inamorata, Sonia Barnes.

If Lucas is the most obvious Bob Stone avatar in Damascus Gate, Adam De Kuff might also be a contender, sharing with his author an improperly managed mental illness (it’s made very plain that De Kuff has stopped taking his prescribed bipolar meds a long while back)

Stone had two modes of handwriting: one a gnarly cursive he used to talk to himself and the other block capitals, more easily legible. On a scrap of torn paper in a crate of Damascus Gate research material is a draft of a self-mocking doggerel poem...

You would have believed on the screen was where my attention stayed.

He tells me I have a lot of fear. He tells me I have a lot of hurt. He says someone really did a number on me, that I’m a really hurt person. 

Macy’s Closeout Sale                                                                                                             

I am curious what newcomers think of my city,
but it is not really

Upward Mobility

First, we push the children into their games and giggles, to insulate them from obscenities circulating in the kitchen  / Then we lose our temper, & act like masters of a new