She was lost. Torn between what to do. I saw it clearly in her eyes as she stared at me. I wanted to tell her to let go and be with me even if it was just one night but I couldn’t. One night wasn’t enough.

That’s when it hit me. I scrambled to his side of the bed in haste, silently opened the bedside drawer and located the box of matches he had used to light the candle.

When I was learning the anthologist’s trade many years ago, sitting at the knees—metaphorically speaking, at least—of veteran anthologists like Damon Knight and Robert Silverberg, I was taught that you should always save your strongest and best story for last.

Journey through the Power of the Rainbow represents a condensed compendium of literary efforts from a life dedicated to transforming the themes of injustice, grief, and despair that we all encounter during some unavoidable point of our existence into a sustainable life-affirming poetics of passionate creativity, empowered spiritual vision, and inspired commitment.

That was the thing about love in my time: that it had no rationale.

The dollar bills attached to her hips fluttered to the rug of the small square stage, like the first flakes of winter in the Bronx. (Dark City Lights)

I heaved into being, came out of the stone, the bricks, and other elements, and took form. (Dark City Lights)

A New York plate that said you die. (Dark City Lights)

Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man from back home is talking, you better listen closely. (Dark City Lights)

The runway splayed out at her feet and at its height were the limits of the world.