the man who touches you also touches
the other women of the city, this special
man who you chose to be your first man
even after you’ve met so many men who
wanted to know you as a woman

When I wasn’t on the road, I ate lunch at the diner just to watch Cathy polish the cutlery. 

When our baby arrives I am feeling a funny mix of elation and terror – what have we done?

I will shake your hand now. Later maybe we will have drinks. 

Sometimes we’d see a slip of moon hung in velvety sky, and we’d find ourselves crying for no good reason, or maybe every reason that we could think of. 

We know who has her period and who is still waiting. If a girl takes her backpack to the bathroom or sits pool-side in swim class, she has her period. So do the girls who—when they ask Can I go to the bathroom? and the teacher says, No—say But I really need to go.

Smart girls don’t tempt the devil. I was a bullseye, a bloody Rorschach blot, walking into the prison flaunting my muleta.

MINIMUS OPUS

1997
I was hiding behind a chair
Cutting off all my hair
My father asked me
If I was a retard
I replied honestly
I didn’t know
Childhood is
A population of no’s
In a field of

I turn 30 next month but I’m no longer afraid because I read somewhere that time is an illusion. I am purchasing an anti-aging moisturizer, just in case. It’s expensive, but money is no object. I’m worth four figures.

Neck Tattoo

Your neck tattoo spoke to me but I needed a
translator. Needed a nail gun, a barn wall to
respond to  your forward  advances.  After a
night together,  I woke to find  that your

More than most players, examining Guerrero's life feels like voyeurism, or like wandering hospital corridors with your head on a swivel. When he was good, he was, as James suggested, astonishingly good... But his bad times were difficult to watch, and lacked the privacy that we'd all hope would greet our worst moments.

I watched Jim Johnson try to close out the 9thin front of a half-capacity Camden Yards. My father was supposed to come, but he was six blocks up at Mercy Hospital relearning to use the left side of

And yet, when it came to hitting a baseball, I always liked my odds.

The solidity of contact is registered first in the hands. The knowledge radiates outward from there. 

Old Seals Stadium is a shopping center now. It is a parking lot, a grocery store, a 24 Hour Fitness, a Ross Dress for Less, a Japanese dollar store. I get all my errands done at old Seals Stadium—all

It's their first practice in good spring weather,
not only not raining, not cold, but full of light.

He said that Thompson could be the fastest to hit five hundred, a first ballot Hall of Famer, but I just nodded and sipped my coffee.

Wrigley had put out a study claiming that gum chewing increased performance on assessments and my elementary school took it as gospel, sending letters home asking for us to bring it on test days. Marshall brought Big League Chew. 

Gaylord Perry toiled for twenty-two seasons in the majors, and the look on his face suggests it was hard toil indeed.