Cherrypicked stories

The mailbox swings shut. A neighbor slams his door. My lover rolls on his side. My coffee pot finishes its brew. A car cranks. A school bus beeps to reverse. A rifle is shot. A police car zooms by--on a mission to submission. An ambulance pulls out its gear from the back. Oxygen mask, stretcher, looking for its victim to strap. Paper ruffles, mp3 player shuffles as the disciplined man begins his morning run. A baby cries and the mother wipes at her wrinkles, only to find they haven't disappeared. A widow lays in bed, ten minutes longer than yesterday, not sure when to begin and or how to end the past that won't return.

Notes From a Reluctant Love Nest. Day 1. The Morning After and What We Are Doing About It. She told me yesterday over the phone. The fourth quarter of the game had just started. The Steelers were down 13 to 6 to the Raiders. I was three for eight on my picks for the day. We gotta talk she said.

Jamie gets a tattered piece of paper out of one of his pockets and puts it on the white plastic table in front of Brian. He points at the scrawled ink that covers it, 'That's me squat,' he slurs, 'gimme a fiver an' you can stay there too.'

I'm waiting for the coach home at Victoria Station when a tall, thin, goat-faced man with brown skin and dreadlocks stands in front of me, and looking down at me through his sunglasses says: "Sister, I want to go to Falmouth, I've got my ticket right here..." He talks loudly in a hoarse, french-tinted voice. People look at him with distrust. He smells like the dirty kid at school has been up all night drinking gin.

....

Thee plaster figures, minimal, modern on thy knees before the crib and after midnight mass, an exodus trails remnant candlewax.

I am cultivating a fear of my face, I find in particular it's the side streets with the lip line gutters that keep me moving past shop fronts, particularly fast. To try to keep it clipped I've made a map of all the places I find friends;

The memory she perceives as a puzzle of irregular pieces that can be laid out and gathered in, then laid again in immeasurable patterns. Tonight, now, in her fur, she journeys to Nepal where William's blue eyes hypnotised the natives and Oneshot's hot blood united them in a way that was more profound and sacred than the vows they had exchanged at the little Norman church in St Nicholas at Wade. William had seen the leopard first, a fully grown male striding without fear through the clearing. He held his finger to her lips, pointed: He's yours, Charlie. Aim for the heart.

IT WAS a December. I distinctly remember it being cold, which given the month, was not a surprise. What was a surprise was that I was naked, with blood on my chest. It was not my blood. It was the blood of an ape, whose body I had just effortlessly cast through the window of a jewellery store.