This place is a black hole, if nothing else. No light, no sound. All he knows is that once a life has entered into its sphere, it cannot escape. more »

There are too many women on this syllabus. Don’t review us. There is too much inside of us. more »

You stare at me for way too long, like I've either disgusted you or like you want to tell me something else about yourself that for some reason you still cannot. more »

If the media says it's true, who's to say it's not? more »

One of us, I guess it must have been Anton, was going to spend the entire summer in bare feet. We had the obvious objections—How will you get service? What about tetanus? But we wanted him to do it, really. We… more »

“Me, Tarzan,” he says. “You, submissive? You like heliports?” more »

What is that? Amanda said from the edge of the hole. She had a watered-down drink in hand. Is that some kind of spaceship? more »

Consider this. It is the hottest time of day when the sun lights the entire sky so bright that one cannot be certain of its bearings. The girl lies on a rattan chaise lounge in the garden veranda listening to… more »

By the time I touched it, I knew it was a penis and not a cashew. more »

A sphere of hope, like A.W.’s pain, unraveled down the back of her throat. “Please don’t kill me,” she said. more »

She learned once, by the dark spaces between stars, not to believe what one sees. more »

What would happen, those of us with darker imaginations would wonder, when every point became too far separated from all others? more »

Patagonia. She said it like an incantation, trying to cast the same spell over me that the word had cast over her...Patagonia: the end of the earth, the limit of human understanding. more »

He starts carefully lighting matches while Zoe sleeps, one by one, cautiously fingering the burnt orange of the wick, absorbing sulfuric bliss, blistering his fingers’ tips. Every match is to him ever more erotic. Every additional flame snuffing out whatever vertebrate life in him still remains between human stitching. more »

“I love you, Frankie,” Jade says. I tell her I love her back. Neither of us believes it but it sure feels good to pretend we do. more »

There wasn’t much in the hut besides themselves and Amelia Earhart, and they couldn’t bear to look at one another in the eye. more »

She said, “A tall skinny man drove a knife into his body more than once.” She looked up at bright lights. They were not stars. They were not watching over. more »

When the man discovered that Lupe was staring, he grabbed the arrow shaft and walked to where Lupe was lying on his stomach. The man got on his hands and knees. more »

Lara is the fattest woman in the world, the signs say, though they have no way of proving that. Otto puts her on a big scale, the kind that’s used to weigh cows, and he has people guess her weight. more »

i ask my mother how you accumulate losses with aging and don't fail of heart. how do you just keep losing life and yet remain engaged with living? she says the problem is with america. more »