Stories

It has its life, returning always to the ocean. It doesn’t care.

He tried to regain that moment of grace, but there was no conjuring it.

Any good river should be fat, any good ocean should be worth meeting. A child won a hundred dollars by taking it from the tail of a muddy calf. I remember Robinhood too, but that feels like a different thing.

No matter how much money there is, it can always just drain away.

What I want is a woman who knows all the meanings of indulgence.

His voice was wrung with panic as he spit curses like spoiled milk.

A clumsy coyote descends an old hill of garbage. Death is visiting.

I loved the game not for its shapes alone, but for symmetry’s quiet flash.

I was a son again until my parents died. Even then, I felt like myself.

I must be led by what was given to me as streams are led by it

Perhaps the only way to see a whole body is to see one coming out of you.

When I walked in, the kids applauded. They were like, “The poet’s back!”

Such longings: Errant. Verdant. To have a good time. And dream.

Unnatural as a ghost; the thought rose unbidden to his mind.

Instead, she stares right at us, her shoulder half-naked in broad daylight.

She couldn’t have carried knowledge their kind would soon be extinct. The sediment came when it did, sealing them in their varied positions.

What a good time we could have if we were happy to be who we are.

An author’s choice of a book within a book is never arbitrary…

What right does an American mutt like me have to depict in fiction the lives of a Salvadoran family?

This skinny blonde steps on the stage in a skimpy Balinese costume.

Ulrike was not in the water the day the fishermen brought the ray.

From that day on, Sivaprakasam got embroiled in an ungodly mess.

Brain an inkblot liquor stain until the heroine blinks the coma away.

Just give me a small joy, say, the size of a ketchup packet.

I’ve never heard of Badgley Mischka (A person? Two people? Man?)

Like superstitious sports fans, we played the song night after night. Since giving birth I’d become hyperaware of death.

His spirit shone fiercely, shaming the chasm by illuminating it.

My days pass through me as music through a thin, stretched wire.

Her girlish hand the color of rich vanilla floating over the flotsam.