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I sobbed even through hymns sung too gently to lend me cover

Descent jumps and jostles, nausea drops me back to the floodplain.

Her previous existence seemed unreal, now, a faint rumor.

She looks in the mirror above the sink, and her image makes eye contact.

He didn’t fall in line with our well-established porn-shop hierarchy.

The rings of Saturn flash their nothing yellows, nothing blues beautiful.

Nothing was permanent, no friend I made, no math test I took.

When one of the Baxters yelled, “Hey, Turd,” we all turned our heads.

Let’s span a time with each other. The mutual will give us pleasure.

Annette. Such a little bit of a person. Emma couldn’t get over it.

I have wasted your childhood, photographed you too much.

Brassy bullets fell against the floral comforter like little candies.

My students are in rows, alive—day-picked apples cut by teeth.

I was always being left behind in the mud, a bandage around my eyes.

Maybe older Natives have more trauma than younger ones.

Tomorrow I’ll be ratted out about the hunting, but I knew it’d be worth it.

In Astoria, Leo and I find a small church on our way to the river.

A question will render in a throat before blowing out its socket.

Michelle dances on his forehead like an imp, like an illness in motion.

When we move together in the dark I can almost get to him but I turn back.

Like a bird with a broken wing I will smudge the line of the hopscotch.

Tobias Wolff

Outside the kids play stretcher. One of them was dying between my hands.

Had he been a man, we could’ve saved his life right then and there.

What would you say about the driver of the truck that killed you?

Six-word stories about the the perplexities of love and desire.

On the swings in the park, a woman sounds an off-key minor chord.

I’m touched by kindness, I declare. That anyone wants me is a miracle.

If he was cheating on her, he was cheating on her paintings as well.