Granta Publications

he would later tell interviewers of his memory of his parents lying in bed, holding hands, reading Ulysses to each other

Dave was in the local paper with a picture, hand up, pouncing on a question. His name appeared again that same year when a poem he wrote about Boneyard Creek, an old irrigation ditch that passed behind the local library, shared first prize:
Did you know that rats breed there?
That garbage is their favorite lair.

then retreat into the pack. He threw snowballs at a classmate on his paper route, then ran away when the boy confronted him, then came back out and threw them again. He mocked the boy’s father’s love of flowers.