Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams

same, at any restaurant the world over

if the sea were a great oyster on a plate that could be served up, tasting just the

I saw the gooseflesh on my skin. I did not know what made it. I was not cold. Had a ghost passed over? No, it was the poetry.

a time I believed not in God nor Santa Claus, but in mermaids

I often wonder what would have happened if I had managed to pierce that looking-glass.

My childhood landscape was not land but the end of the land

I sometimes think my vision of the sea is the clearest thing I own

n. I pick it up, exile that I am, like the purple “lucky stones” I used to collect with a white ring all the way round, or the shell of a blue mussel with its rainbowy angel’s fingernail interior; and in one wash of memory the colors deepen and gleam, the early world draws breath.

Taken aback by this sudden financial pounce, Esther almost immediately recollected how church people of all orders were forever after pennies, offertories and donations of one sort or another.

skidded up and down