Callie landed just after eleven o’clock in the morning. Immigration was easy—the guy glanced at her picture and grinned. Her bag came out third. She had nothing to declare...

Every day, at nine in the morning, Mr. Ghosh got his mustache trimmed while waiting for things to happen. Betel juice dripped from one side of his paan-stained lips, his backside comfortably lodged on a rickety chair in the middle of the busy pavement...

Five Stars—Excellent Tour and driver/guide The road took us into the island where we came across Victory. He held a pointed staff and left footprints long and vehicular. Victory spoke very good English and heaved like...

wine why my tastes tonight run more for rye or whisky my throat demands that burn fire water which helps me forget my world wines for therapy not for forgetting a night from wine put this mark upon me she pushed a cart across the street from kohlmans liquor store on seventh and dell...

So I left Lady for good then got off the bus. It felt right, leaving Lady Prananda. Plus I thought no way sadness is not not not going to happen to this girl right here so I dropped her for good, my supposed best friend, paid fifty cents and jumped off at fucking Freeport...

Before my mother, there had been another woman, Britannia, whom my father loved and married when they were both in their twenties. After a brief courthouse ceremony with three friends as witnesses, they moved into a mobile home in a trailer park called Fox Meadows...

I should throw it away. Nubbed and frayed from all the cycles. The thrashing and the tumbling.  This shabby robe that robs the dignity of my undressing. This effigy that hangs on tatty sleeves. These droopy pockets where I store the balled-up tissues...

Printed paper with paper clips and Pencil on paper in artist’s frame Cady Noland American, born 1956 The Museum of Modern Art, New York City Squeaky said she was serious but also having fun...

When planning a menu of prison meals, it’s parts and labor. The parts are the ingredients; they have to be beyond cheap, available in great quantity, and built for simplicity. Which leads to the labor. A cheerless lot, the fewest number of steps...

“You’re not breathing,” my mother said. A voice coach who teaches Suits and Baby MBAs how to speak in public, she’s an expert on the way nerves shut down air intake. I couldn’t tell her that at that moment, seeing Claire’s eyes in hers...

I was at my girlfriend’s when she got a call from a friend whose car had run out of gas, and this friend wanted Katie—that’s my girlfriend—to—and because her friend was pretty much shouting through the phone, I quote—“Grab a gas can and get your butt...

Which pickle to pick is not fit for childish deliberations, especially when pecks of pickles have picked this child and that and their mamas and daddies and their whole generations. Of the pickles you're in: which outs to battle for, which battles to pack for...

After Grandma died my sister said, We need to send Uncle Larry cards, keep him happy, and I said, I don’t think that he was ever happy and she said, We should all send him cards even just postcards and I said, That’s sweet but I’m going to go in a different...

Beyond the headline-grabbing accomplishments in grotesquerie, he is most vividly known for his habit of so fondly fondling his shotgun while his femme du jour gave him head, finally squeezing the trigger with relish at the precise moment his so-called swimming demons shot into her...

The inside of the car is dark. Aspen trees with their white bodies flash by the passenger window. They frighten you, but you don’t tell your father whose smells of sweat, cigarettes, and whiskey you’ve come to find comforting. He’s a strong man...

Pure revenge proves hard to come by— you have to take so much into account! Barely have you cursed the thieves when you wish their families fed, because what do we know of their story? So I reserve it for those who probably couldn’t even fold these origami boxes I am stringing for a friend...

Back when I was young and dumb, I never thought that I’d grow old and clueless, writing my own damn eulogy, one poem at a time to the tune of an unsung song about all of the women, good times and great ideas that I never had, a legacy built with...

I mean prison. I enter the cell and a fist flies through the dark and slices wide my lip. I look as my kiss streams from the wound: a fight to the death, if this isn’t about sex: about who’s trapped and smashed into like a crowbar inside a clay bust...

The pill was so small she couldn’t feel it in her hand, could barely feel it in her mouth as she looked out the window above her bed. If she had struck the sky that day, she was sure it would ring, so clear was it, so blue was it. She hadn’t heard from Staz...

Birthdays I remember the teapot summer. Thanks to Brenda I couldn’t forget if I wanted. I remember the day we found it I was strutting the center line on Main like a lunatic. Big-shouldered, daring cars to get past me. Drivers honked and flipped me off...

i was 9 when jackie chan slid into a taxicab in LA, kids stared into the projected screen me too, noon hot as hell mosquitoes buzzing none of the adults are impressed us swatting air with exposed palms no where to hide. who fights lethal flies this way?...