If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada.

A pool game mixes ritual with geometry.

Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild.

I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.

In my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said.

I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.

When you do try to picture the boys who do ask you out, they're absolutely featureless, like old carvings eroded by centuries of rain and wind.