'I'm here for a computer,' the lady whose name I never will get around to learning says to me when I ask her, by way of introduction, why she's standing in a line outside a Best Buy location at two-thirty in the morning on a weeknight. My toes haven't gone numb yet, but we've only been here for five minutes. There's a couple whose names I won't get either, even though we'll lie and cheat and threaten fights with strangers together in a few hours. They say to her 'us too,' and, with a smile, '...

The field used to be an anti-aircraft battery during the blitz of World War II. When the war ended, it was grassed over for use as an athletics field, complete with a running track on the outside. They lay down eighteen inches of soil and sodded it over, which means that during a rainy period it's prone to flooding – they have to drain it, disturbing the ducks who come over from the man-made lake by the public toilets. During a hot, dry spell, the field becomes hard, like concrete, and the pl...

This is the story of how someone named Donutman changed my life forever, and why I'm not embarrassed of it, even though I was embarrassed of him when I first met him and for the next several months after that, almost the whole time I knew him, even the first few weeks after he changed my life and helped me become the person that I am now. I have never thanked Donutman, but I know that he never wanted or expected thanks, because none of us did. It was one of the things that tied us all togethe...

It wasn't a hero he sought. Heroes were just men who hadn't been killed yet. He'd had heroes before and he'd read the reports in the pamphlets (back when he felt it worth the risk to maintain an interest in such things) about their deaths. A hero was someone who led only to disappointment. He was no longer interested in seeing men attempt the impossible, fail, suffer, and die. He considered this wisdom. “Papa, is it wisdom to believe that no one will ever create a finer world?” His son, proud...

1. while new orleans struggles still to get its face above water- while chicago holds in the hope that it can avoid another fire- while new york hides its skyscrapers every time an airplane circles overhead- while san francisco apologizes again for suggesting that queers could be in love- while portland buckles under the weight of all those guitars playing hollow notes- while seattle gazes down from a hill built upon computer parts- while houston struggles to see sunlight from behind the high...

not lonely, no, she sits by herself at the subway, her sandwich long gone and the place almost closed, leafing through flashcards- i run through the options when i catch her eye- _elementary school teacher, public speaker, student learning a foreign language?_ for a moment, she's all of these things- but i do not need a sandwich so i walk past the window and never find out.

1. this is how you find yourself drunk at eight o'clock on the day before thanksgiving: get a dog, a big one, give it a man's name, but not the name of a man you've ever met- hire movers- large men, hopefully, to do odd jobs around the condo that you moved into six months ago, before that dog showed up- and don't let them leave. 2. you're like a professional boyfriend, she slurs to me after i take the box out of her backseat, before i leave in its place the rug that carried too many memories ...

even if the photographs were taken today, they would come out in black and white- in the windows would reflect the faces of children- girls in poodle skirts, boys in coonskin caps- clutching report cards, expecting rewards for every a they made. i am the camera. i see the sign above the door, a glittering marquee spelling out the name of a woman who died before i was born as an anachronism, my eyes view the colors as shades of grey, the shades of grey, as deep shadows. someone died in this bu...

he spoke in the parlance of a mustachioed middle-aged man, like so many other midwestern boys who worshipped their fathers- all horseshit and tough guy, like mike ditka at nineteen- i could see him in the rice paddies of vietnam, his helmet too big, nervously talking to the older boys around him about jimi hendrix, trying to hide the fact that he was terrified- i could see him fighting the hadjis in iraq, taking videos and sending them home via the internet, using his grown-up words and the b...

not just her, not just her mother, but her grandmother, too- three generations who have never drawn breath in a world that couldn't be ended by a weak man with a finger on a button. she is nine years old and tells me be careful as i lift my bicycle over the gate to the apartment building in which we live- i'm in love with her, her family, this building on a sunday night on which the evening edition proclaimed another nation's success at testing a weapon that could end the world by fire. i wou...