HER HOLLAND, ON AN OVERCAST DAY / Story in the anthology A Shape Produced by a Curve (great weather for MEDIA, New York, Summer 2023)

“It was a high stakes game. Life or death. Were there any higher stakes? Perhaps, if a person put up her soul—if she believed in that kind of thing—the possibility of keeping it or losing it would take the cake as the highest of all stakes…”

HOW TO TELL A JOKE WITH A GUN TO YOUR HEAD / Story in Evening Street Review (No. 38 / Summer 2023)

“Just then she felt like she could use a good sanitorium. A quiet room in a plush hospital resort upon a snowy peak with a window from which she might see a single set of footprints walking off into the distance…”

PERICOLO! NON LEGGERE! / Story in The Frogmore Papers (No. 100 / Fall 2022; cover design and illustration by Neil Gower)

“There is a sculpture here in Rome that I know nothing about, and I hoped you could help me identify it, maybe tell me something about it …”

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"Late Afternoon" (1931), Oil on Canvas by Francis Speight

THE SHINING JOY OF FALLING FLAT ON YOUR FACE / Essay in Notre Dame Magazine (Spring 2021; cover image: Late Afternoon, 1931, by Francis Speight, oil on canvas)

“I wish I could forever remember but suspect I will forget—as so much is forgotten—my days with Jack, the little boy, my nephew at the lake house only days ago this summer …”

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HOLY WATER / Essay in Notre Dame Magazine (Spring 2007; cover art by Serge Bloch)

“It is my duty to open the lake house this year without my father, my first time without him. It won’t be easy. The challenge is getting the water started after a frigid winter of dormancy during which pipes improperly drained the previous fall may have cracked…” 

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MY BELATED READING OF HIS SHORTENED LIFE / Essay in Notre Dame Magazine (Spring 2006; cover photograph by Don Nelson)

“A friend of mine, whom I'll call S.C., committed suicide on a Wednesday in February. On the following day, the New York Post reported that his age had been 37; I thought he was 35, tops. I had known him for two years, and in that time, for me, I guess, he hadn’t aged a day…” 

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DS TO ** / Story in American Letters & Commentary (Vol. 13, 2001; cover image: New York Beautification Project No. 36, 2001, by Ellen Harvey, oil on abandoned building)

“off at X72.
s on ** Ave.
1st r at the light onto ** Ln. will see the ** LL bf on which I never played on your l; on your r, a f of tall and ancient o, and whispering m, divided by the c, its upper banks streaming with tendril-like extensions of irregularly leaning grandmotherly …”

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SHAKESPEARE WILL BURN, REGARDLESS: BULLETS OVER BROADWAY AND THE REAL PROBLEM WITH VCR REMOTES / Essay in Andrei Codrescu’s Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Life and Letters (Nov./Dec., 1999)

“Today I rented and watched Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway. I’d already seen it at least three times before, but who can account for taste or moods? …” 

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NOLA / Essay in BLACK DIRT (Fall/Winter 1999; cover art: “Thomas & Skeezix Meet Ezra Pound” from the Parsons family photo archive)

“Mr. Sandini rapped a gnarled knuckle against the table, marking rapid 2/4 time, whistling. An old tune. It came straight off a music roll from a box in an attic. It seemed somehow out of place, like a wind-up victrola. But it was alive and present in his compressed cheeks…”