My mother's been on my back about getting a job.

I'm walking past the fruit store and a delicatessen and the lingerie store under a sky the color of a freshmint cough drop.

Others cannot accept that a suicide or an auto accident was not a hitjob by the Ku Klux Klan.

The whole time we walked to the beach, Dorothy kept yanking at the flappy little skirt covering her bottom. I looked away from the poverty of her flesh, from the weave of veins that crossed her skin.