Compassion by Peter Cherches
A man who looked like my mother with a mustache told me I must be on the wrong line. Isn’t this the line for compassion?
Waxing or Waning by Sarah Freligh
You are driving on the lake road toward Canada when an orange moon presents itself to you, plump and juicy as ripe fruit.
Brighten by Christopher Locke
It’s nearly morning. The sun climbs its invisible chord and slats the walls between the blinds.
Sunbather by Nicholas Cook
The sky is squeegeed cloudless. He’s seeing a sunbather on the side. I picture her breasts, skin burnt by tar paper on the roof.
Why You Move to New York, v. mid-80s by Steve Adams
Because you saw Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver and The Panic in Needle Park, and connected to the disturbing beauty beneath the horror, the dangers, something you needed to see and taste, something hard enough to wake you from the slumber of the small town you’d grown up in, and then Austin, where you’d moved afterward; a place that had frightened you at first.