I couldn’t remember why I was running—if it was to find you or to get away.   I came to every door and knocked to make sure no feeling...

My girlfriend believes everything happens for a reason. She doesn’t think it was a coincidence that Markie moved back to Chicago at the...

Uncle Bob called from Selfridge Air Force Base, just north of Detroit. He needed my help moving my aunt and three cousins, driving his...

“Whilst Man, however well-behaved, At best is but a monkey shaved.”—W. S. Gilbert (1884)   What I remember is a bitter January...

The last tourist left just a few weeks ago. Five thousand hotel rooms- as empty as a busted flush pay tribute to the legacy of greed...

Time stood still on Pop’s watch since the day he died. Ma went through his things and gave most of his shit to Goodwill, but she wanted...

I am a woman of several faces, buried in between the lines of another man’s history. I am an undertone, an afterthought, a device. You...

Smell is a superpower. At least, it is for my wife. Crossing the street arm in arm, she’d proudly pronounce that she could smell the top...

I always ended up here.   Never planned to. But once the streetlights hit, and with a belly full of bourbon, I was dragged to it like...

His tiredness courses through him like shards. Every step is a struggle, every breath a battle. Watching the waters of the river, he...

Stark white walls. The door locked inside. Two hospitalizations, six weeks apart.   I was buzzed in. Anywhere but here. “Your mother is...

What if it was Adam who ate the apple and in retelling, told it slant? The tale recorded by scribes of men with etching tools and papyrus...

“Fair primrose, we weep to see you fade away so soon”—from Elizabeth Bowen “I feel like this may have been a mistake,” protested...

The bossman pressed a stack of sweaty bills into Rudy’s cracked palm. His weekly pay was always filthy: creased, ripped, and worn to the...

They must come from somewhere, these words. How do they emerge from the reticule in which they’ve been hiding with reckless abandon,...

My whole life has been a lie. No, that’s an exaggeration. As Samuel Beckett once said, “The truth is so hard to hide.” I’m only saying he...

It’s always the nights that are the worst for Jack, the nights when the Scouse next door would show off his complete inhumanity, a Scouse...

Lady Liberty told me a secret while in therapy.   As her psychiatrist, I’m not permitted to repeat it, but I can tell you this: she...

So here I was at the Quik-Mart on the border of Markham and Oak Forest, a busy little filling station with video slots, food, and several...

I would ask you out dancing, but I can’t dance and I’m married   to a woman I make be my mother because my mother took such good care of...