I suffer a reversed vanity. Clinical tendency to tend to every detail of how I prefer to be seen, which is not at all. Even by myself. If forced to glimpse my own face? I do so eyes closed. I can’t bare anything more than faint outline of lips or arched brown stretched across the…

When the shells hit the zoo five hundred exotic species spurted like awkward pollen and scattered all across the tan streets and plumbing-covered roofs of Baghdad. The leopards ran for the Tigris. An elephant wandered into the middle of the intersection where I sat in the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, praying to the…