Abraham goes to the brook at dawn. A good time of day, fresh, like a fawn, and he will be one there too. Not everyone knows how to use a dawn, but Abraham is versed in ancient arts.

Julia Marie Slocomb died without ceremony in the heat of a West Virginia afternoon.

Mr. Winthorpe Squibbler, an obscure novelist who lived in Birmingham, was a quiet man with a subdued personality and a knack for last-minute twists, for the time being, one of his only private vices in which he indulged as a narrative voice.

Gemma had one blue eye and one brown and each child she gave birth to was not her own. 

Natalie Sutherland, née Baraka, née Ramos, née Casarano, née Rabinovich had always wanted to be a black widow. A murderess. It had been an obsession of hers since she was quite young.

A clawed, carnivorous canard,


the mocking-voiced camelopard


is partly leopard, partly camel,


wholly myth and maybe mammal.

She’d lost her head, but has a new one now.


Their little Audrey played dolls all alone.


Upstairs she went with a dried-out soup bone.


Not quite financially stable

Never was she ever able

To purchase a barn for the not quite bought horses

Her pleading through marriages led to divorces

And old age approached with a bang