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He wondered how others lived with their sins. Maybe they never did.

The celebration stops, like a sparrow hitting a sliding-glass door.

If someone looked into his eyes they would see how ugly his mind was.

you crawl into a hole & pull the hole in after you on judgment day even our mothers will flee from us.

She examines her left hand, finger by finger, gripping and pinching the flesh.

The moths were the things that invaded, like a bad man’s touch.

Ann Beattie in a wonderful reading of her story “Find and Replace."

Less magic, less defense, more speed, more stealth.

The jealous Othello, ready for murder, was transformed into a school-boy.

The smell of death, once it gets inside your nose, is unmistakable.

By the kitchen sink, my aunt held a fish as if holding the Holy Body.

Fishing with Dad guaranteed two days of just us and made me special.

I told you how I’ve always been attracted to little violences.

He loves me. That’s half enough: he’s the only man around.

It is here I learn the speech of men. The speechless guilt of every swig.

I'll pick a black card of luck for you: star, pinkmoon, mirror, ostrich eye.

Even as a child, I was skeptical—testing God when He wasn’t looking.

He greets you with a kiss and marries your elbow to walk the path.

i was a wild thing down by the river, quiet like wild things are.

Exhausted, androgynous, delirious, I delight in my many parts.

I dug a hole in you; I jumped (here is the church, here is the steeple).

Before there was air, sublime silence. There was no one not to hear it.

I thought about the little graveyard where the man would be laid.

he has come to write like nervous wasps in my mind like a grocery list.

When he bent close to her, his balaclava glowed silvery in the dying sunlight.

After almonds after anchovies. After baguettes, a plate of cheese.

Glad to hear the garden can be worse than being awake

Lunatics call it annihilation . . . Think of it as not doing a thing

A plus B; a child in peril, plus love, dissolution of, equals a story.

Michael McGriff