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He wrote a very fine poem in that swell. But with no pencil, no paper, he had only his memory to commit it to. He practiced it viva voce in the waves. But dazed by the awful truth that young Marie had a secret life, that someone else was holding and squeezing her perfect water balloon breasts, and …

upon its first real release he would unburden himself in one violent salvo and then settle into a more manageable state

A just-married jalopy, trailing cans

“I never met a girl who rides Italian motorcycles,” he said. “It’s like you aren’t real.”

He looked at my helmet, gloves, my motorcycle key, on his bureau. The room seemed to hold its breath, the motel curtain sucked against the glass by the draft of a partly opened window, a strip of sun waveri…

My uncle Bobby, who hauled dirt for a living, spent his final moments of life jerking his leg to depress the clutch while lying in a hospital, his body determined to operate his dump truck, clutching and shifting gears as he sped toward death on a hospital gurney. “He died on the job,” his two sons…