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The Lesson of the Master

Kids interfere with perfection. Wives interfere. Marriage interferes.

The Little Weaver of Duleek Gate

It was up airly and down late with him, and the loom never standin’ still.

The Loneliness of Fireworks

If I also could be lifted into the sky, I’d wish to be blown apart.

The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday

The sense of power that flights of temper evoke will betray you.

The Lost Sister: An Elegy

She could not have known how uncannily she resembled me.

The Man Without a Shadow

This is not deception. This is a subtle way of conditioning.

The Mercy of Pronouns

Sometimes a you is a lover, but he is not my lover. He is looking at me.

The Mustache

“I mean it, Martín. I won’t marry a man with a bald lip, like a boy.”

The N

Ron Carlson

The Novel

For two days I’ve been weeping over a nineteenth-century novel.

The Only Way Out Is Through

Derek was holding a gun. The barrel was pointed at his own temple.

The Outlaw

I bring out the emergency in people and I don’t know why.

The Palace of Illusions

I managed to talk sensible Alice into a little pink outfit and high heels.

The Part That Burns

Mafia didn’t like me, except for the tickling game. It went like this.

The Perfect Couple

It had been four weeks and five days since she confronted him.

The Phone Rings

On her sixty-second birthday Marge Olson got a call, not a gift.

The Photographs of Your Life

I saw it on her face that day, a look like her heart would drift into the sky.

The Poet

I know quite well that I’m still a beginner and have a long way to go.

The Practice

I lost myself in their minds: for the moment I actually became them.

The Promised Land

She must know she was a mistake, what they call now a surprise.

The Rage of the Squat King

What would make a sane person want to watch such blood sport?

The Ravages of an Unloved Life

I wait for the one thing that will change my life to arrive in the mail.

The River

He said, You have no brother. I didn’t know what he meant. I do now.

The Saltcutter’s Wife

The pain lithified to numbness, and she recalled the time of his courtship.

The Same Inside

We talked. She was the same inside as I am, from the same kind.

The Second-Worst Rug My Father’s Ever Seen

I hear myself giving advice in my father’s voice: Take the emotion out.

The Silence Here Owns Everything

When he kisses me, my heart flutters in my chest like swarming bees.

The Sin of Height

What humanity needed was that gravity-defying miracle, the bird.

The Small Hours

The past, you hear it, the small hours, sucked down the undertow.

The Spaniel

After nearly a year of dating, I never stopped thinking of that other boy.