Daniel Brown is a stand-in for a lot of outsiders I’ve seen. Ones that don’t fit into normal society. That get singled out because they don’t “look” right. The constant judging from little kids to senior citizens. And this person is weary. How can they not be?… Continue Reading
I tell myself he’s okay—until I catch him out there in the withering dusk, spraying the hose into the air like warning shots. Keep back, he shouts. Keep back from my tomatoes.… Continue Reading
There is so little time to teach you about the wild. I still have to show you how to grin, for the world. How to make it obey, how to remove it from its axis and bounce it the July street. Slap it, balance it, make it only spin for you.… Continue Reading
Before the placenta was fried with two brown eggs. Before Mom deemed us, “Perfect Gentlemen.” Before Ms. Ann sewed two black suits down the middle for us. Before we wore that suit to Ms. Ann’s funeral. Before we were too small, too slight to be pallbearers on Hudson Ave.… Continue Reading
There’s something about the guy from Barstool Sports eating pizza that just commands Bradley’s attention, waiting to see if some random pizza shop owner in Connecticut is going to suddenly double their sales. Bradley likes the idea of someone’s life changing in an instant.… Continue Reading
Soon, probably, I’m going to kill Lori. She has it coming. When the live lobsters are ferried to the kitchen for steaming, the visions overwhelm me, divine visions of Lori’s dispatch by toothpick to the brain.… Continue Reading
‘cause I’m thinking I got the Ray Liottas like from Goodfellas when he’s coked to the eyeballs, he’s truly fucked up, knowing shit’s gonna hit now he’s under the eyes of the feds, and the buzzing, buzzing in my ears is the hover ‘copter tracking my moves inch for inch.… Continue Reading
Breaking Wallace Goldberg’s nose for being constantly late on the juice. Or the time I took a sledgehammer to Dennis Quinn’s legs and left him in an open grave in St. Anthony’s Cemetery. That’s as much as she knows about me.… Continue Reading
My momma always told me, “Son,”—that’s how I knew she was talkin’ to me. She’d say, “Son, you ain’t no good.” No sugar, no salt—but somehow almost sweet as warm honey apple pie, fresh from the oven. “Now, it ain’t your fault. See, your daddy was no good either.”… Continue Reading
Dead men, dead rats, dead trees out on the ridge. As I ran, I shouted at God, gods, any goddamned god who’d made the world we lived in at that moment. Dead mothers, children with napalm-sizzled skin. I screamed fuck at God.… Continue Reading