1. “So you slept with her.” They were camping in the rain. Downpours. Boot–deep mud. The forecast, if either of them had checked, would have alerted them to the possibility. “We slept in the same bed,” he said. “We didn’t have sex.” Rainwater glistened on his face. Gaunt. All cheekbones and chin. Smith grinned. “And you think that particular distinction is going to play well at home?” They had… Read more →
The semi’s aerial knocks a rising thrush back down to roadside shrubs it startled from. You hit the brakes on impulse, pull over, ply the green for breath, not half- knowing what you’re looking for where grasses lean like shadows from the earth. Soon it’s lusher than the balance of the best life left to you. Scratched up by your… Read more →
I knew I would die if my dreams did, but that came later. First, I was a janitor at Wal-Mart. I did almost nothing, was paid almost nothing. I’d take my big push-broom and walk around the store with it until the managers saw me, then I’d stash my broom and read books in the family restroom, the only room… Read more →
You said how could we know our wild and happy youth could end ankle deep in the dingy snow of an endless winter. As if we sat on adjoining bar-stools in some low dive drinking Jack Daniels and missing the cigarettes we relinquished, fossils of misspent hours. It was dark then, the lake, invisible beyond the windows, holding the weather… Read more →
The Pioneer Press calls him slain barkeeper. The Star Tribune says he leaned out the window of his car door in the dark of a winter morning and it caught him in the throat. Start with basic shapes, and shade. My high school drawing teacher was shot by a boy he never met. He drew with thick strokes, dark and… Read more →
Author’s note: During 1894-1895, Annie “Londonderry” Cohen Kopchovsky rode her bicycle around the world. Legend has it she set off with a pearl-handled revolver and a change of underwear—and nothing else. I am indebted to the research of Peter Zheutlin in Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry’s Extraordinary Ride, 2007.
Cancer isn’t supposed to be good news. When you hear the word tucked up close to someone you love, the world is supposed to go dark as a curtain is drawn on the future. You’re supposed to collapse into a chair, slack-jawed and numb. But when Dr. Levine told me that my mother had cancer, my hand shot to my… Read more →
In the novel about the halted, ruined city that represents evil solidified, the curious boy is meant to awaken the queen who represents the inversed Madonna. Instead, he picks plums from the one tree that still blossoms. The sweetness of the fruit suffuses his senses. Their syrup makes his lips and cheeks sticky. Instead of ringing the crystal bell that… Read more →
When I arrived at the building listed on my schedule, the door was locked, and I was the only person there. This early, the campus was quiet as a mountain, and the ground was wet. A fog swaddled every tree in milky, humid air. I decided to sit on the grass to wait. The day was darker than the last… Read more →