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Nick Will Be Successful Influential & Will Marry the Pretty Girl and He Didn’t Even Go to Yale

The graffiti suggests the most essential story of New Haven.

Nicky Nicky Nine Doors

A finger on the bell, a quick sprint on light feet, and then stifled laughter.

Night Moves

Even then (Colin remembers now), it felt like the end of something.

Nighthawk: Recollections of a Lost Time

Insomnia! There is a sickly romance to the affliction—initially.

Nocturne

I’d make a tub of mud to keep live crabs. I’d refill it daily.

Northern California

Teams spend days surveying the damage and label me a mess.

Nowhere, Australia

Navigating the trailer park at night felt like a raid on a strange village.

Occasions of Sin

Goretti was a victim perfect for her time, an icon of Catholic sexual politics.

Ode: Feeling Up My Friend’s Sister at the Moment Their Drunken Father Begins the Dog Slaughter

She takes her shirt at the waist and pulls it up slowly: her hips, belly, bra.

On This Day in Poetry History

She was gone then, inaudible, steeple-reticent, demure as sky.

One-on-One

I understood that life could end without warning, even young lives.

Orientation

Joshua was well versed in things to which I was not yet privy, like sex.

OTP

Is there some one way a guy should be on his wedding day, dickwad?

Our Neighbors the Bells

Our neighbors the Bells are watching, watching us when we play outside.

Overdue

Mom often went to work on her days off. The library was her refuge.

Parasols

The beer and the kissing and the lateness of the hour had got to me.

Paris in the Twenties

Now he was all out of dreams, out of rage, expectations, and money too.

Pastoral

I found a lodestone & I went to the creek & I buried it in the creek bed

Perseids

How can we go on believing each day won’t be the one that flames out?

Pioneer Mother

Did Sharon and Roy make it harder or easier for their mother to leave?

Plain Lucky

I received a surprise invitation to a tryout camp at Ebbets Field.

Poised, Like Jellies

We’d open our mouths and sink, trying to make an ocean of ourselves.

Portrait of the Cartoonist as a Woman

My mother taught me to rebel within the boundaries of acceptability.

Prank and Other Poems

cannibal chowder and a kiss by the splashing voices of a pool

Purple Eyes

The purple-eyed women on her mom’s side began generations ago.

Questions about Butterflies

All those butterflies I impaled when I was a boy—will I go to hell for that?

Quieter Than Water, Lower Than Grass: Growing Up Afraid in Russia

“Why don’t you say anything, people? These thugs are murdering me!”

Quitter

“I’m sorry,” I wrote, “but I have to go back to the bookstore.” My only plan was to plead for my old job back. To my surprise, it worked. The law was safe; the law was my father. I decided to go to law school.

Rainy Season

The transformation of their maid from shadow to sexpot thrills Maizie.

Reading Her Poetry

I was once a rider of mastodons, a waitress showing skin.