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  • Plan B

    He held my hand on the ride from El Centropast the sugar beet plant     its smell of dying frogs like the ones we’d dissected in biology lab     the formaldehyde on my fingers for days     the way lettuce smelled like slicing     or tomatoes     little hearts     They formed a white mountain     the sugar hulls     sweet climbing hillgated     & locked beside alfalfa fields      The desert sky roiled…

  • Minnows

    We’re all waiting for Yolanda, Yolanda’s all we think about, the Yolanda no one says aloud. We say your wife instead or your nobya, since they’re as fierce as any storm especially during their monthly. Lorenzo says he’d like to be the first to taste her spray when Yolanda makes landfall, and we all laugh…

  • Heaven

    The Houston nightclub, long shut down, whereI once spent Friday nights. Someone shoots up Heaven,both bars and the smalldance floor in the back.But the patrons, all justmy memories now,ethereal, wisps of smokeand soul, don’t noticeor care. The bulletsspray through themwhere they cluster atthe second bar, blurringtheir bodies as they flirtand throw back cocktailsthat turn to…

  • Watertown Man Charged with Manslaughter in the Drowning Death of His Best Friend

    Fooling around, witnesses said, the man pushing his friend off the dock with his foot when he couldn’t wake him up. Svedka bottle back and forthall afternoon, the one passed out, the other working him, cajoling, needling,wheedling, that if he didn’t wake up, wake up right now, he was going to push him in, thinking in his own…

  • The Witch of Chelsea

    1749 I never answer when my mother searches for me. She calls to me in Dutch and sends the dogs after me, but I hide in the tall grass. Foxy and Abby are great big bulldogs, one mottled like a rainy sky, one white as snow. They never bark when they find me; instead, they…

  • The Budget of the Soul

    A homeless woman at the reference desk asked, “Am I an angel, or merely a supernatural creature?” She was agitated, all the muscles of her narrow face in nervous motion, and I was too startled to answer. A man I worked with, who often ignored patrons for his own reading, rose and stepped forward to stand…

  • The Dogs in the Neighborhood

    The dogs in the neighborhood are barking.At the end of his lead our young dogstalls in darkness between yards and digs inhis two-year weight. He has a scent—God is in the garden.I crouch and point my light. Characters run across yards with pumpkin bucketsand faces in masks or marked with paint.This is what trembling feels…