I know you are there I understand you with the cells of my everchanging skin I remember you. Not with my brain, but with my jutting elbows the bone in my hips and in my gut as if my DNA stole your being and toils to replicate the remembrance in every cell of my body. I am hesitant But I speak from my toes At rest in the grass There is joy In this stuff we are made of. And you, you believe what your skin tells you while I, I listen for assurance in the echoes of neurons and chemicals What is t...

Who ate the bag Of Winesap apples which was resting On the counter And that I was definitely Saving for my lunch? Godammit. They were perfect. So tart And then so sweet.

“I read your journal,” she said. “So?” said he. “So, I know you kissed her.” I should say at this point that she knows that he doesn’t think she’s special. He told her one time that so-and-so looked like a black-and-white film star when she smoked, as if poised for a witty quip. She asked him how she looked when she smoked, and he said she looked like a person who needed a cigarette. She envisioned a frowsy waitress on her three-minute smoke break, grease on her uniform, and her heart broke a...

“People see pictures in their minds? For real?” She was shocked by this as an unpublished but prolific writer; and therefore, as someone who thought she had a good idea about other peoples’ inner lives. Although she had often heard people talking about their “mind’s eye” she thought it was figurative—a cute way of describing the process of attaching words to memory, which differed so severely from the direct. She had never really considered that it could be literal. And now, upon discovering ...

When the wealthy began renting the bodies of the poor, it barely made the news. Who paid attention to the news anymore? Jim heard about it on the street—heard it was a good way to make some punch. He started looking for a mark immediately. He’d been told it was hard to make an independent connection, but it could be done without an agency. He found her on his third day of searching. A Blue Lady, standing on the street corner, trying to look like she was just passing some time slumming on the ...

This is the night his life will change, he can feel it. The June air is humid, and presses close to his skin like an anxious lover. He kicks some loose pebbles at his feet. His stomach is trembling inside. Overtaken with nervous energy, he runs several hundred yards down the street. When he stops, he notices the overblown bulb of a moon glowing brighter than any of the streetlights, and feels a childish urge to howl at it. "Yes," he thinks he will… The burning in his muscles catches him by su...

Just over a year ago, Brad and Susan had worked and re-worked the details, and the mid-century look in the living room was flawless, in an updated and hip way. Their friends raved about it. The flesh-colored Eames chairs glowed against the cold turquoise walls and track lighting revealed disks of gleaming wood floor. Brad sat in one of the precious chairs and read. It was desperate reading—he grasped each word as though it were the rung of a ladder leading from a pit filled with toothy horro...