A wealthy man pays my way enough for me to feel beholden and now I'm in a swimsuit. We alternate between sauna and steam room, Hell and Hotter Hell, and he finds the suffering in each a luxury, his senses delightfully obscured. Hearing assaulted wit...

No one was quite sure what to make of Mary Whemple’s behavior. For the past two weeks, she had spent all of her lunch breaks standing at the entrance of her office building, arms spread, eyes closed, and her wrinkled face tilted to the sky. Mary was...

the waters will flow through the gutters with ease without you having to interfere hydrodynamics, you've said and the clicks of the emails coming, will silence themselves at least for a time, your head so heavy maybe you can heal, hard as it can be,...

Performative, being non-intuitive in meaning not performance but creationary utterance, the expressive force of godliness, is therefore not the word I want to use for what I’m saying—maybe instead existential or molecular or something more robust li...

Brains get rewired all the time; night is when it happens, mostly; I’m in years, realistic as dirt, asphalt, caked-over orgasms; hearts as grotesque as real hearts, sticky plump biology as in bravery; see, aorta and veins & skin tectonics all re...

Here in the bright reception room on the fiftieth floor, the cries and threats rising from the street were a reminder of the dangers Jan had faced and might face again. Soon he was to meet with a figure who would decide whether to extend his sanctua...

Growing up In Port Harcourt was like swimming in the River Niger without touching its water; though my body was making sidestroke and backstroke, violent symptoms of living, and occasional sliding movements, hands flailing, legs flapping, as though ...

I watched you spoon-peel the ginger grate it wrap it squeeze ginger juice through the cheesecloth We dipped dumplings in soy ginger drank red wine from red cups laughed with red lips left each other with wine-red bruises John See lives in Washingto...

Worried it might come back, you gently remove your top, gown yourself in green. Breasts compressed with paddles, you stand and hold your breath. A small burst of radiation, a black-and-white image of the Moon. The doctor comes back, checks the lunar...

Look, everything is moving so quickly, it seems still— In a short time, this will be a long time ago. Vast cities and whole deserts are vanishing without an echo. Lifetimes pass in the split-second before we wake. Too late was yesterday—right now is...

On New Year’s Day. At the Brasserie Lipp, a temple of tradition, there's no use phoning for a table, they won't reserve one. You’ll have to wait like everyone else, It’s part of the Lipp ritual. Smoking a pipe, cigar or using a cell phone is forbidd...

what buds on the tongue is the unproven dough of a morning, blue as your first-kissed body. You try and conjure the waterfall of a running tap, colander fat with the day's haul, a mouth stained with joy. But this is central London and there are trai...

Every blackberry is a black hole. Does that sound right? Every blackbird is a carrier of night. What gestates in their stomach is a staccato of the day's longing – all filigree and verdigris once caught in the batea of a fox’s eye. What's sifted out...

After being cast in what they’d believed to be a The Bachelor-style reality dating show called “Dream Date”, twelve American women decamped to the English countryside to have their road to romance televised for mass consumption and excoriation. Foll...

I find you Between coffee and kisses In the kitchen Tiny feet pattering We sneak these moments Like they were our last breaths Fingers intertwined grasping each other between the business and the obligation of the day I will always choose you again ...