An excerpt from a novel-in-progress Our hearts are concrete, poured over the stars and left to harden in the windless void. We are ash in the throat of man, ground dust under his boot heels. Long, long ago, before we were born or made or sprung from man’s fancies and our father’s head, a single…

1. The Magician had six toes on his left foot. He had four on his right. He often thought that if he had been a better magician — one with something more than a store-bought wand — he would have been able to even things out some. But he was not that better magician. The…

Stage #1: Conquest After the death of a favorite wife, it is natural to feel disorientated and adrift, as if moving unsteadily through a thick fog. This is because your first response to bereavement was to assemble an invasion fleet bound for Japan — in itself, a usual part of learning to manage and understand…

Static danced along the barbed wire, blue grasshoppers leaping from barb to barb. The skin on my arms prickled as the sky slowly grew darker, the dust and dirt coming in quickly from the north. A rolling wave of dark grey, almost black — that Kansas dirt, worse than the Oklahoma red or Texas yellow.…

When my brother gets mad at his daughters, he takes Xanax with a bottle of wine. He thinks he blacks out because he never remembers what happens after. His daughters — identical twin girls who just turned 14 — meticulously document their lives on the Internet; I’m their Facebook friend and something like an informant.…

I let him ring the doorbell eleven times. I knew he knew I was home, and I knew he wanted my eggs. “You must have a stockpile,” he said when I opened the door. He hadn’t been by last week. With the breeze pushing past me I asked him, “What is it about chainsaws on…

Customs Naked, they lay in bed staring at the ceiling, as if it were a camera. Talking to it, laughing, high from adrenaline and sex, the smell of them. The fire alarms were quiet now, and the only sound was the hiss of the wind, the motion of a car on the street stories below.…

“In the name of God, please let me die in peace!” Those are the last words of Voltaire. Then he looked at the priest standing above his bed and died. “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” Those are the last words of Socrates. Then he drank some…

It was a murmured buzzing, a beeping, a maniacal monotone creature chirping. It was in his head. It was impossible to get out. He roiled the sheets till sleep was gone. He emptied the drawers. He unplugged the TV. He shook the alarm clock until it rattled. He muffled the clothes hangers. He stood in…

We showed each other pictures of our kids. The girl is my favorite, you said, I can’t help it. It’s true. Before we were almost lovers we talked about where we were from. We found the six degrees that separated us and longed to shrink that number to none. Before we were almost lovers I…

Mary the virgin sets the tables I was a waitress in a little café in a small town in California. I’d always wanted someone to come into town and take me away on the back of his big black motorcycle. Some wild man, some lawless man. I wouldn’t ask where he was going — he…

The night that cats were wished away was a hard one full of wine, tears, and spectacle. Even those of us who were indifferent to feline companionship felt heart broken for those who weren’t, and together our humid, grieving silence was more tangible than the awe-filled silence that followed the disappearance of cancer. We were…