"She gave only what was easy for her; what came naturally and instinctively. What she had always given of herself to past lovers, but nothing more.That was usually enough for them, at least in the short run, because she was very special in her way. As a result, she never made any genuine effort to go beyond her old safe boundaries, the first layer, below the thin topsoil of her limitations. She probably believed she worked hard to make their relationship succeed. Look at what I’m doing for you and all that I’m giving of myself. But it was no different from what she had given others in the past. Had she really made any new effort, gesture or concession? No. It is not hard for a person who knows how to waltz to waltz again. But if they have never tap danced and are asked to learn, then dancing becomes both difficult and challenging. She never attempted to dig deep within to find any latent qualities that might have helped her to grow and become more whole. It takes real courage and effort to mine undiscovered parts of ourselves and then use them. Because in truth we do not want things to change. We rarely choose to do it voluntarily. Because change invariably makes waves in our lives and the higher they are, the more they scare us. To attempt to become better (stronger, wiser, more understanding…) than we were yesterday means swimming straight into those waves. If she had looked and found such things, such potential, and then had the guts to put them to use, it might have changed everything.

from the new book

For some reason, I've been a frequent witness to different groups of rowdy teenage boys lately and I've come to at least one general conclusion about them: in most groups of more than five, there are almost always two recognizable types-- the sound effects guy and the Karate Kid. Inevitably there is one boy who makes an unending array of sound effects to match whatever is going on: If the gang are all hurrying to get on a subway, he's the one who makes the 'vroom-vroom' or tire squeal of racing cars. Or if someone in the pod is being teased by the others, Mr. Sound Effects always offers up the convincing 'rat-a-tat-tat' of a machine gun mowing the poor guy down, or the sound of some other incoming explosion to match what is happening to the victim. Mr. S.E. is also adept at beat box, lions roaring, jungle birds or monkeys screaming, seven kinds of whistling, trucks reversing 'beep-beep-beep', etc. The other inevitable type in these guy gangs is the one who never stops throwing fake karate kicks and chops at others in the pack. Sometimes he's good-- you can tell he actually takes karate or tae kwon do classes. Most times though he's just the one who's the most Attention Deficit/tightly wound member of the band who best expresses himself by constantly whipping out flying kicks or Bruce Lee-like punches to either scare or impress his peers, particularly if girls happen to be around at the time. More often than not his buddies roll their eyes when he starts as if to say uh oh—here he goes again when their very own Karate Kid flares into action.

Ex-Boyfriends

by Kim Addonizio

They hang around, hitting on your friends
or else you never hear from them again.
They call when they're drunk, or finally get sober,

they're passing through town and want dinner,
they take your hand across the table, kiss you
when you come back from the bathroom.

They were your loves, your victims,
your good dogs or bad boys, and they're over
you now. one writes a book in which a woman

who sounds suspiciously like you
is the first to be sadistically dismembered
by a serial killer. They're getting married

and want you to be the first to know,
or they've been fired and need a loan,
their new girlfriend hates you,

they say they don't miss you but show up
in your dreams, calling to you from the shoeboxes
where they're buried in rows in your basement.

Some nights you find one floating into bed with you,
propped on an elbow, giving you a look
of fascination, a look that says I can't believe

I've found you. It's the same way
your current boyfriend gazed at you last night,
before he pulled the plug on the tiny white lights

above the bed, and moved against you in the dark
broken occasionally by the faint restless arcs
of headlights from the freeway's passing trucks,

the big rigs that travel and travel,
hauling their loads between cities, warehouses,
following the familiar routes of their loneliness.

The mind is like a detective-- it wants facts and figures. But the heart, its perennial sidekick, keeps shaking its head and smiling: There was no way in the world they were going to find the facts and crack this case.

The subway doors open and a crowd of people pour in. One of them is a man wearing a long beige winter coat covered from top to bottom with blood. It takes seconds for the realization to hit you—THAT’S BLOOD! Then your eyes jump up to his face. A raggedy street person, he’s clearly been in a fight and didn’t fare so well. There are cuts all over his face. One of his eyes is already beginning to swell. But it’s the bloody-massacre coat that is most shocking. I peer around at those nearby to see what their reactions to him are. Mostly it’s sneaked peeks/look-look away-then look again. Manners or decorum or simply embarrassment, almost everyone who has seen him cannot look directly for more than a few seconds. Except for the beauty. There is a really beautiful young woman standing in the corner who cannot stop staring at him. Her eyes are almost bugging out in wonder or incredulity and she obviously feels no shame looking directly at him for as long as she likes. It is such a contrast—beauty and the beast, but it is the beauty who is fascinated not the other way around. The tattered man hasn’t looked her way once.