“We didn’t always have to drive thirteen hours for a peach, but the third year After the People Disappeared, a brutal winter killed the peach trees in southern Michigan. This would be our last peach pilgrimage. “

“Remember when Mom sent us that travel UV, shaped like a dildo?”

“I’ll whisper the end of the love story I started / in 1993 and you can tell me about heaven”

“After watching Black Panther 2 / the man next to me sobs / each inhale heavy”

“When I was twelve the dam broke. It had been built under the direction of William Mulholland. The morning of the flood, the dam keeper noticed a muddy leak and called Mulholland, who said not to worry.”

“ He showed me how to eat a tamarind pod. I told him I’d been drying seeds in the pandemic and asked if tamarind could grow up here. “I don’t know,” he said, “but if they can, it’ll take a couple of years.”

“All those years, my mother sighed in response. She was adding up all the extracurriculars she’d had to chauffeur me to in her head. The financial contribution that had made possible the tiny, toney liberal arts college where I majored in philosophy. All of it — wasted on a job that wouldn’t even cover my student loan payment.”

“If you’ve got the cash and can learn to squint your eyes just right, God can be as pink as cotton candy. Hell, God can even bend into a metonym for TV dinners.”

“It was a Friday night at Borders, almost closing time, and the weird girl was stalking. She prowled the sale bin, snatching up a DVD and holding it near the flap of her messenger bag, as if titillating herself with the idea of shoplifting.”

“I am also in a poorly fitting suit. We, the new adults, have been put on display at the front table. I have met a few of the others before, but I only know Caroline. This is her party.”

“The doves are not doves. King pigeons have two fates: raised for food or raised for release.”

“Can you deny my free will? Can you banish my shadows / silence my echoes, make the person in the mirror disappear”

“Through a crown of pigeon feathers & an obsidian grill, he tells me I won the motherfucking lottery. To hurry up & let him in already.”

“At dusk, orphans flock to the abandoned chapel, / an assembly formed by starvation, from scabs & stuttering ribs, / memories of parents slamming doors to ruined flats& the creak of deadbolts in their ear canals.”

“According to Oklahoma State Law (1.3.XXIV) any such moisture becomes the property of CareCorp at the moment of condensation, when such condensation occurs in corporately-owned airspace. “

Chopin, who, following a lifetime of ill health and heartbreak, died / at age thirty-nine of pericarditis, a painful and sudden disease / of the heart

“ I was uncomfortable with that thought. How often should you take stock of your life and evaluate the direction in which you’re headed? “

“I realized that was the first time in a long time that he was riding as a passenger and traveling much further beyond his regular five-mile radius.”

“we stood at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the sea, / down in Pacifica, remember, near that Fancy Taco Bell, the one / took my sister to for her prom after her boyfriend Rick / drowned down in Santa Cruz”

“ … you say, and don’t answer when they pause, they ask you how long it was and you demur, long, you say, really the truth is it was four years, the length of an education and you don’t know what your world is like now beyond coke and sharing fries with men who don’t know anything about you, …”