The same day that he canceled all his newspaper and magazine subscriptions, Mr. Christopher deveined a pound of jumbo shrimp by hand. 

This would have been her favorite season in the Allegheny woods. The shadows of the trees were rickety, and the wind had sap in its scent. But last week, Ty had left; now one day decayed into the next.

She was half the length of my little finger. A grown woman not much bigger than a bullet. My job was to keep her safe. A man’s mission, no doubt. So I ducked into this room whose ceiling was a planked, hardwood 

In the afternoon, the dog trainer, Anna, arrived to work on “leave it” and “drop it” and review what they’d learned about biting. She left a yellow slicker and a pair of pink boots in the hall. Her clothes were dry.

Has he come to say goodbye? I begin to wonder how he will say it as I ring the downstairs buzzer to let him in and throw the rod of the police lock, listening to his footsteps drag him up the stairs—unclear, indefinite thumps, muffled by a sliding sound as his shoes lag a little behind his forward momentum. Each step is followed by almost a second of silence before the sound of the next.

Classic American story: I was out of money and people I could ask for money. Then I got what the Greeks, or even the Greek Americans, call a eureka moment.

Davis called, told me he was dying. He said his case was—here was ­essence of Davis—time sensitive. “Come visit,” he said. “Bid farewell to the ragged rider.” “You?” I said. “The cigarette hater? That’s just wrongness.”

Rikers could make you deaf. For weeks after his release, he shouted. It turned his volume up. He somehow found himself in exchanges with other men on the subway or on the street who had passed through the jail as well. 

I tell you, I am no more interested in poetry than the next fellow is. I mean, I can take it or leave it. On the other hand, once in a blue moon I come across a poem whose unfolding holds me for the distance. 

Once upon a time there was a girl who spent so much time looking at her hens that she came to understand their souls and their desires intimately.