The old man’s dream had been the same for several days. He saw a great buck standing beside Atohi’s grave,…
Paulette Jones, nee Williams, sat on an empty bench facing the Willamette River together with a coffee fast going cold,…
“Ma’am?” Mic Drop’s metal chair cricks as he turns to me. He’s waiting for me to say one word. They…
I was in the 8th grade, 12 years old. It was 1958 and I had a penis the size of…
For as long as I could remember, “Oh Shenandoah” was my favorite folk song. But, after that one unforgettable night…
“Hello, slut.” Cassie Moore, sitting cross-legged against plumped-up pillows on her bed, grinned her usual insult. “He said it again.”…
Three shaggy headed boys were near my dock, antagonizing a horseshoe crab on its back. The oldest and tallest of…
Oscar Fritz sat behind the long foldable table as music crackled through the record shop’s sound system. He tapped his…
“Listen,” Alfie says, but Willa’s ear is already pressed against the rough oak of the cabin door. She frowns, hearing…
On the day of my 35th birthday, I decided to divorce my husband. I didn’t wake with the thought, but…
“Did I tell you,” she asked me, “how everyone assumes it was the Moors, but it was actually the Romans…
Charlie Fuller eased his rig off of the interstate to a rendezvous with a dead friend. The sun was westering…
'May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also?' --E.M. Forster Listen Ramu. Your village may have told you…
Something this stupid you only need to do once to be no better than that brother. Crimes of neglect burn…
My father is 98 years old, and I plan for his funeral all the time. I anticipate it, and I…
My eternal love forever began at a poetry slam in high school. Shyly, you approached the stage at one end…
The single ceiling light cast a shadow against the limestone wall. Wind hissed and battered against reinforced windows. Disembodied sounds…
Chipper kept his hand on his empty beer mug like it was the only thing holding him up. He was…
I’ll give you my prognostication, Criswell says, but I’m a little superstitious. In actuality, more than a little. Okay if…
I thought killing her would be gruesome, something that would haunt me for the rest of my life. Christ, the…
“X-Man, you think we’re ever going to move beyond taking orders for boosting cars? Older model Caddie, Jetta less than…
Jack Tucker loosened his collar. It had been tough work but he had single handedly saved every job in his…
I was sick of the blonde’s side-eye attitude from down the bar, and I wanted her fringed blue jacket, so…
It was a strange, exhilarating, wonderful, frightening week. A great effort had been made to gather all the family for…
Maureen the Witch was neither young nor old, neither homely nor fair. She had dark, piercing eyes and a wild…
Natalia Ortiz was an 87 year old former showgirl living in San Antonio, Texas. She loved the shock which registered…
A wind whispers through the leaves of your tribe. It is said in the Lofty Mountains of the North lies…
Light now came in through the windows, that pale, deep forest light growing slow and incremental. The cabin smelled of…
December 6, 2002 Dear Santa, Hello. It’s Anne. Do you remember me? The last time I wrote to you I…
My toes dig hard into the wet sand as I try to increase my speed. My legs are tree trunks,…
Will lay on his canvas cot, listening. Across the dark room, his older brother Tad shifted on his bed. Probably…
October 12, 1956 R.I.P. I ain’t much for religion, but even I know the story of the apple. It’s all…
I kept looking at Ugolino and his sons; stones with lifelike qualities, where death gave the impression of resurrection. I…
“Without a press, I have no idea how our Fleet can be manned.” Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson 1981 People don’t…
January clouds hung pregnant and gray as Beth slid from her car and set off across the parking lot of…
It happened at a crossroads. We had been on the bus a long time. Stopping. Waiting. Moving again. The arguing…
Mystery cloaked my father like kudzu on an abandoned farmhouse. He had been adopted as a young boy in Mississippi…
I am Honest. That’s what I am called. I don’t know how old I am, who my momma and dad…
"What do you mean he hit you?" Mark said into his cell phone. The rough-sawn shiplap walls of the nursing…
None of it would’ve happened if not for the knife. Funny how one small thing can lead to another. Johnny…
It was just another weekend at the Benton’s. I sat beside George’s bed at two A.M. watching him obsessively twist…
The cigarettes were arranged by brand behind a locked glass case as if they were a valuable work of art…
The pills crammed in the pocket of her jeans popped out onto the cement floor before I even had a…
That night Caroline told me the story of her body. We lay in bed. Candles burned on the nightstand. The…
Red and green running lights play in zigzag reflections across the black water of my dream. A docking bell rings…
Reggie reached for my guitar, a look of pity on his face. “Here, you’ve got the strap tangled,” he said,…
David Chase entered The Golden Straw, a tavern in Crossbridge Landing several leagues northwest of greater London. The air was…
Bobby Jones’s sweat-covered shirt stuck to his body like glue. His long, mostly gray hair dangled well past his shoulders.…
Our shortstop, Galen, was the revolutionary. I was just a hippie who played a shallow third base. And music. Well,…
The snowfall was unrelenting, like nothing we’d ever seen. We almost forgot that a mountain lay a few hundred yards…
I met the devil when I was seven years old. He came to me in the shape of a bony…
“Come I tell you, Salima, heeh,” Yurna whispers in that way only lunatic women can. She holds my hair in…
I like watching the curtain ebb and flow with the breath of the fan. The way it darkens almost to…
Dorothy’s window with a whoosh rushed the room—sucked towards dog and girl from the force of the storm outside. The…
I slept on the beach by accident and was walking down the Powerline to my room. It probably wasn’t even…
The fallow February field had gone to a seed with wild oats and mustard weeds, growing higher than my eleven-year-old…
She orders tea and cakes and laughs at something the girl behind the counter says. Her laugh is different now.…
The hawk circled overhead, lazy and unhurried. His wings caught idle rays of the sun, glinting gold, amber and bright…
An outcrop stood like a bare admonishing finger in the distance, ringed with purple sediment. Badlands and sandstone. The sun…
“Mum, I’m pregnant!” Joy bounded down the steps from the kitchen into the little city garden blooming in late summer…
They say that dancing is an expression of the human experience, an art form that that can move the soul…
“You should go see the herbalist,” Karen’s mother would intone any time a cough lingered more than a day, and…
Tom squinted, shielding his eyes from the bright summer sun. The wind whipped through his hair, so hard he could…
Max Gorecki was the black sheep of my father’s Pennsylvania cousins. The men were coal miners, auto upholsterers, or heavy…
“Bienvenidos a todos y todas,” the host, whose name was Camilo, enunciated in a rich baritone into the large microphone…
The minute he walks into her office Dr. Anna Costello knows the Psychiatrist’s report is wrong. After thirty years, she…
Raymond Forbes scratched his nose in thought. “Is it barb wire or barbed wire?” “What is that?” Detective Dillon crossed…
“…Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow…” -William Shakespeare, Macbeth Malcolm didn’t think about her in October when…
I was seventeen years old when I made my first queen. It was three weeks after my birthday, when pa…
The transmitter is in the hills. It’s all by itself and so remote that if I had to tell someone…
I rode an elephant into town. It felt like the right time to do this. We traveled westward. As my…
Heading up the steep grade, Dave punched hard on the gas. The ancient Dodge pickup shuddered, then picked up speed,…
Grandma arranged the bedspread out at the edge of the parking lot. It floated in the air for a moment…
“You’ll love it, I promise,” Michelle says over her shoulder. She needs both hands on the wheel, letting go only…
Across the Sudd, the animals are migrating – white-eared kob, antelope, gazelle – and so, too, the plague moves in…
Brought back from her latest daydream by a sudden chill, Logan shifted her body around in the stiff train seat,…
The aged wood of Meaghan’s chair squeaks as she shifts. It rings out in the room. Other than the loud…
I live alone in the old yellow cottage at the neck of the woods, where the small stream says goodbye…
Maybe he didn't need to plug into the memories, but he always did. If he took the case. He didn't…
I imagined I would spend my entire summer vacation with my hands tightly gripped on handlebars, but the handlebars were…
We take a table by the windows. Below, San Diego glitters like diamonds on black velvet, and the lights of Coronado…
Being an artist didn’t carry a lot of weight in my neighborhood. It’s not like I could hit the ball…
I used to climb these steps in a few bounding leaps. Not now. And not in so many years. The…
There were three of them, the robbers, each dressed in a black overcoat, black high-top sneakers, and thin black wraparound…
Two summers ago I looked at the kitchen wall, the one next to the bedroom door, and I pointed at…
Jasper and Sarah meet on alternate Thursday nights in a florist’s shop. Sarah has the key and lets them both…
Before locking all of the doors, I leave the altar spotlights lit because there isn’t much sun coming in from…
All Saturday Lerner fumed. In part it was because he would miss two events: first the Clippers hosting Golden State,…
“The beauty of things must be that they end.” —Jack Kerouac Elbows on the bar, Spider McNulty was giving careful…
Carol and Adolfo were out walking when they saw the sandwich board blocking the sidewalk in front of a local…
Sam’s secret dream since he was eight had been to have a voice like Rossano Brazzi’s in Summertime. He heard…
The sheep were panicked. Streaming down from the upper pasture, the stampeding thuds of their hooves were accompanied across the…
Pat’s eyes drowned in commodities; every bit of wall space had been co-opted into a kind of display of goods.…
Sarah spends the meditation, moment by moment, boundless in a kaleidoscope of images. Her chest rises and falls to the…
The wool tangled into spidery clumps and spilled out of the knitting bag. I tried to undo the knots by…
Around the time that the barely solvent town of Hale, Connecticut banned minstrels, it discontinued its firecracker shows after my…
She says she’ll meet him in Rye, a halfway point, although she doesn’t owe him that. There’s an old-timey diner…
If Mr. Morris believed in God, he kept it to himself the day they dug her out from his old…
You will have found it by now. The small white sock trapped in the corner of the fitted sheet. You…
The call from McGann surprised me. I had just settled into my apartment in Paris for the summer, and we…
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