The moment I saw Artie Ranberg, I knew there was something special about him. Fresh off the bus for my first day at Traverse City High, he stood at the front of a queue of upperclassmen, shaking hands and welcoming all of us freshmen to our new...
When mama took us to the zoo,
we’d sit in front
of the baboon exhibit.
Enclosed here and in the wild
baboons do not mate for life.
You showed me your green-coded
pictures of nebulas
and taught me to cry galaxies
Buck saw a long, slender, shadow move out of the dark corner and into the light. He stopped breathing as as he realized the only thing it could be.
They want ambition, trajectory, arc. They want to know about the novelist you dream of becoming, not the words you inscribe on the insides of your thighs with razor-tipped calligraphy pens.
I pointed with fingers numb from the damp air, alone by the water again.
In Antarctica all noise is white noise
Like the frozen breath in your lungs
Trying to unfold
You have not yet been born, but your mother and father are already thinking of names. Isaac, Stephen, Albert. And Jane, if you’re a girl. But you won’t be—your father’s certain.
I hadn't been to the grove in days, neglecting my duty to both the trees and myself. Coming here recharged me, gave me back power and life I found nowhere else.
"There are evil spirits in the beech tree," Alphonse's mother-in-law said. "All the village knows it and they talk of nothing else."