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She unhooks the sapphire pendant from its stand. Slips it into her pocket.

How many gods do you believe in? How many good men?

She takes her shirt at the waist and pulls it up slowly: her hips, belly, bra.

Having a sister or a friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house.

Is it that he is too tired or too afraid to blink into the oil of his own machine?

She wants something red and shiny that always works.

Poets need to be
in constant touch with the extremes of feeling.

A man drunk on the damage he made to a boy’s young mouth.

In its shadow, our mislaid secrets cascade down around us.

My dear, even my ear is trying to eat itself in its attempt to forget you.

She was gone then, inaudible, steeple-reticent, demure as sky.

I cradled the lifeless bird in my hand and marveled at its beauty.

“Jesus Christ,” Dad said, after the counselor spelled it out for him.

Our neighbors the Bells are watching, watching us when we play outside.

Eight years, and she was ready to call it quits. They were both ready.

The only stories we tell ourselves are the ones we need to survive.

It was here—over the highway—where my mother got confused.

Now he was all out of dreams, out of rage, expectations, and money too.

Que voulez-vous? I said. Patisserie, she said and smiled. Pastry, I said. Well, that’s predictable.

A branch breaks and the body lands the wrong way. Snapping is easy.

He was so frail, how could your heart not break when you saw him?

“Pick your switch,” says my father and I’m stepping out into the forest.

In my eyes is the flame of the adolescent he wants to hire.

Did Sharon and Roy make it harder or easier for their mother to leave?

I have so many questions for you, for you are closer to me than anyone.

Let us stifle under mud and affirm it is fitting and delicious to lose everything.

He folds on himself like a sheet kicked off the foot of a bed.

Every day I was forced to return to the one place I did not want to be.

My mother hoped moving would erase the affair with a married man.