Easy/Awkward Goodbye The café radio coughs another tune, all static and yeah-yeah, as I brush salt from the table. A woolly hat with greasy whiskers clangs his fork against a...

      Lincoln Center Subway It’s Orpheus in the underground. He’s working the downtown platform, playing a metal flute from music propped on a stand. At his feet, a tenor sax lies...

      Man-Eater You taught me to be a meat-eater— to chew carefully with flesh-shredding-bones— but I wanted to be a bird, I suppose. Something light and aloft, edible if I intended...

        Prayers God is drunk in the stairwell curled into a ball, slamming his head against the chipped white paint and slurring “forgive me” under his breath. His hands tremble...

      Among Dusty Stage-Props Once again I looked at myself in the mirror. Once again I was overcome by self-pity. Where are the hard manners I demand from myself? I take hold of my...

    Ways of Falling I Age five and slipping off the blue metal swing out back at 13 Marlyns Drive, it was a given the soil would be concrete-hard and Copydex’d with dead grass. The...

    The Cleaving Rain The rain tapped soft holes into Beth’s sleep and she awoke saturated with sweat. A dream slipped away beneath the dark surface. The sky had been falling all night,...

    Eastbourne We’re the youngest guests at the Queen’s Hotel – and you’re 52. It’s the summer solstice and we’re breaking up except we’re making love on the fifth floor in an evening...

The Ghost Hotel I walk with my skin open in the hotel for ghosts. They are here because they had secrets.  I will have none. They are always opening and closing the doors, a constant latching behind...

      Hold the Baby They said she had to hold the baby so she held the baby even though she had no notion why she held it, him or her. They said she couldn't look to see so in her...