An apparition bloomed in my throat when I saw him pull up in his rental car. For three years he’d lived somewhere in the Amazon. Jungle-vined legs subdivided and twisted out of the Honda. Even his bones moved like sunsets I’d never seen. This wiry, tan strangeness with eyes lit by other mountain ranges leaned his full wildness down into… Read more →
You said it was because of a dream that you tattooed all the pigs, all thirty-one of our pigs. Thirty-one pigs isn’t a lot, but it is when you’re talking about what you were talking about. The first night you were out late tattooing the pigs in the moonlight, and this was your dream, tattooing our thirty-one pigs in the… Read more →
Reverend Otis—a tired man in his mid-forties with tired hair and a tired voice—had prepared the funeral eulogy for Hazel Mueller with characteristic lackluster. He’d delivered fine memorials in his earlier years, but the monotonies of life had worn away at his convictions, and for him it had become a bitter pill to make promises to the living about the… Read more →
When Grandpa leaves the room, I begin collecting the dolls. Their display stands leave polished discs in the dusty shelves, crop circles burned between items furry with dust: the box holding Grandpa’s Korea War medal; a 35-years-of-service plaque from Western Electric; a dried-out air-freshening cone. Upright they go into a blue milk crate, American Girls casting polite expressions in every… Read more →
Day 1. Justine says, “Lean back.” Justin obediently pushes back on the arms of the leather recliner. She places damp gauze pads on her husband’s eyes and says, “Here. Hold these in place.” She gently drapes a bag of frozen peas across his eyes and forehead and sets the kitchen timer for thirty minutes. He says, “Thank you, my dear.”… Read more →
My left eye throbbed. The fact that I’d been training at the gym for just such an attack when Doug, an 8th grader with a fat fist, tackled me was more than ironic, it was discouraging. It was a Saturday, which meant Dad would be home, which did and didn’t matter. I walked slowly, kicking the earth with each step;… Read more →
When a gypsy begging on the metro adds that she fled warring Yugoslavia, wallets open that usually wouldn’t. Not Andreas Mann’s… nobody learns from our mass murder, our self-destruction.…He glimpses the gypsy, her calico skirt, remembers an almost-lover, a survivor’s daughter, her bare shoulders, naked back: so vulnerable, so strong.
The white hull of the boat sparkled – the light source, presumably from an afternoon sun, added sheen to the still water. There was no indication of what had capsized the boat. Lisa sat in the dim light of her office, staring at the painting. No sign of life had been brushed onto the canvas. Just quiet stillness. She remembered… Read more →
Begin with a scratch to the scalp, an insidious itch that won’t lessen no matter how quick or deep nails press down. With each carving stroke take white flesh away under fingernails, strips and crusts of grit and oil, crumbling like soft white chalk. The black of blood set in scab, pick that away, the crust of crème brulee, nails… Read more →
He says he’s the one that found it, though he wasn’t sure, from a walkaway, what it was at first. Not until he came right to it, until he knelt in the sand beside the bloat and sog that he realized. And even closer he wasn’t sure, at that time, what it was, what with his poor eyes, that… Read more →