“Arlene never married Lars because some things are better left unsaid. He asked until the time for asking was over. She didn’t want anyone else, but she didn’t want him on her couch after 7:30 at night.”

“Alison is surreptitious and likes to take her time relaxing into her approach. When she is in her jumpsuit I know that she is not Alison, or even Alison playing the role of a cat. She is a cat.”

“…my parents’ divorce agreement, a tarot deck, an armadillo that sang a funny song when you squeezed its belly…”

“I’d never held a living cat before. It wriggled and scratched my arms while the paramedics did their work. “

“In that moment, he looked just like a boy to Irma. Head tilted down, palm turned out and facing her. She wanted to scoop his head between her hands.”

When I have an idea for a story, I never know how it’s going to turn out or, even, what it’s really about. I tend to spill out my guts all over the page, and then go back and shape it.

All I know is, each time I read a poem that seduces my senses—that moves me to catharsis or imparts its own unique brand of wisdom—I change a little. And this fills me with gratitude because, once I mark the page, I know exactly where to locate the feeling that poem roused when I need it.

Two performers, Asun Noales and Sebastian Rowisnki,
stand in a circle of small jaguar heads. 
The heads are sculpted from pearl-white plastic
by an artist named Susana Guerrero.
The heads are perfectly identical.
Their mouths stretch agape, as if caught mid-roar.
Beyond rows of jagged teeth, 
each throat swells with inky black.

Everyone smokes, including the Dictator, whose long massive pipe, clenched between his lips, serves at once as an extension of his power and an affirmation of his will.