The thing about beach towns, other than morning fog, kelp-smell, and the private way wind carries ocean through your hair, is the cliff houses, rich but empty, the ten-foot windows gazing at waves, bought by distant millionaires and never lived in. A waste, BB said, our palms clasped and sweating, our bodies salt-laced, wiry as mustangs. So we broke in, quick as a hat trick, spent weeks wrapped together in the king-size suites, our parents, surprised to see us

We have a word for it or at least the Germans do the frisson of delight when an ex-boyfriend gets ugly or his girlfriend looks like hell or when Mean Sister sports a bad wig but how terrible how very terrible when that same sister enjoyed watching me beaten and I too enjoyed the sight of her stripped and screaming the web of bruises the pleasure on Mother’s face as she slashed with her favorite whip what scares me most isn’t the 21st century box cars to haul peop

You weren’t the one I loved. I must confess: I didn’t have the depth yet. It was Paul, of course— his droopy eyes and putty lips, babylike, unthreatening, despite the then- brutal sexiness of the songs. When I thought I’d grown up, I loved John, genius rebel, loved how dismissive he was, naked with his thick-haired wife for weeks, legs and arms wrapped ‘round her, posed for Leibovitz like a suckling pig. I loved how he’d make a scene, but when I’d busted through my anger,

Of course, it does. Everyone does. The sky’s not blue, and the grass— well—even in your first language, green wears a different name, ...

A year after the fire took most of me, after my back became blood soup, and it seemed my lost beauty— when beauty was everything— was a...

Can we imagine such emptiness? Such quiet. Every bit of us, gone: the jackal-mouthed and gospel-wild, razor wire keeping out the...

Suzie, I want to tell you how frequently I pass the apartment behind the supermarket where we street-danced to the Doobie Brothers, light...

I can’t recline the driver’s seat so I sit straight-backed like a guru, crack a window the air fresh as a silver needle. I’m past the...

for BB We knew which hills to climb, which waves to take us, which sands to bask in, which cars to steal, which church box to jimmy to...

The lavish throat of a hummingbird as it ravishes a penstemon and low tide in evening, breathing like a somnambulant beast, but also,...

Gone the old ogre jaw, the wide churn of brow, his face, smooth, petal-like, helpless as a newborn. I straighten the fallen head, wipe a...

I Then the ground was lit by a sprawl of them— lily pad leaves, spiced, sticky bloom, a flame rushing the field. II Then at home, a spark...