“Again.” “Again.” “Again.” “Once more.” Her son slid down the wall onto the hallway floor. He saw what they did.…
“Don’t leave the backyard, Jodi!” “Okay, Mommy, I won’t!” That last conversation echoed in Sarah’s mind like a brave shout…
Seemingly out of nowhere, although we are hiking with the dog, my daughter asks me, “Mom, can dogs actually be…
The guys didn’t blame me when I sold out. But fifteen years later a loser with a man-bun and spray-on…
I. Mama is a rose, and you are a rosebud. You were once a single potted plant, sharing the same…
When the sound of a stable boy being whipped reached the royal wet nurse through the nursery window, a thought…
One year, the Platte got so high whole neighborhoods had to be evacuated. People lit out for higher ground or…
Always she sought a balance between strength, speed, and aesthetic appeal. She fine-tuned with a scientist’s single mindedness, an artist’s…
Office work gives you a lot of time to think. The desk in front of me says “nothing tastes as…
This is the city in which time converges, an unstable zone where back then is now again as it will…
The first sound Liza hears is her own cry and the cold is a shock and the world is too…
Richard Hawk needs quiet. His office has glass walls. Workers continually mill among cubicles outside his door. Someone sticks their…
The season of betrayal was ending. Spring had arrived with warm breezes and budding oaks. The patio of The Black…
He stares down the long, black barrel of the rifle in his hands. Sweat slides along the creases of the boy’s brow,…
On the near north side of Chicago any September day between 85 and 45 degrees you will see a number…
James didn’t thank me when I dropped him off at LAX to go back to his midwestern hometown for the…
January first, at about 1:00 A.M., my predecessor emerged from an alley as I stumbled home. An old man with…
On November 24th, 1936, the frame of a wooden Chicago Rapid Transit train was left wrapped around an all-steel Chicago,…
Widower was surprised, but then again he wasn’t. A stone’s throw from the house, his hand gripped shaded walls that…
On again, she volunteered me for wood cutting detail. A tree felled in one of last winter’s storms, back yard.…
Their first date. His brittle breath nestles its way inside her ear, eagerly. Trickles its way down her tunnel, taunting,…
That summer I ate all the strawberries. Because the war had been ongoing for many years, because the earth was…
I watched a comedian die on stage once. It was with one of those jokes—about a president’s assassination or the…
Over the past few months, her sleep had become increasingly hard to find. Her nights, oblong, stretched far in front…
“I have a DJ gig tomorrow night and I need gas money.” The fruit of my womb bats his Saniflush-blue…
The ground opens when I force the spade down. Rain’s fallen for three days now, and I only need to…
Traffic never stops anymore. It slows in the wee hours, but at three in the morning I can’t count more…
I can tell you everything about the plane and the passengers, except for their names. We were never formally introduced…
Rain has fallen in fitful trickles the last three hours I’ve been heading west towards Greenbush, Ohio. The wipers squeak.…
The heavy spool of cable on the man’s back hung up on the lacings of underbrush, flipped, and wobbled down…
She stumbled into my room shouting about cloud cover, UV rays, and sunscreen. It was the middle of winter and…
Little and brave, she falls off her bike. Bloody knees, scratched helmet. Scars heal and she’s a junior in high…
At slightly past seven on a rainy night, Wayne pushed inside the restaurant and headed straight for the bar, his…
Rainy night and a whole car down there. That was the talk. Belted into the passenger seat, someone had reported,…
Quentin Vaughn said he would be my boyfriend if I could bust a board with my fist. He sat alone…
A woman gave birth to a girl. That hurt. Her coworker gave birth to a book. That really hurt. Baby…
We thought it was a game. A competition. Training. Preparation for the future. Every week, we got a chance to…
The final applicant walks into the conference room holding nothing but a clutch purse. She smiles at us, a forced…
I was in the alley behind the Seymour St. Stop & Save. There was a van. I don’t have any…
The two women don’t speak to each other. They don’t look at each other. They keep their heads bowed. They…
Before Malcolm leaves home he checks his reflection in the mirror. Is that hair on his upper lip? Slipping on…
There are known dates that resist conjuring, resurrection; buried as stubbornly as thorns. And there are days you wish were…
She just walked away from the car. I kept looking back and it was still there. Mom just kept walking…
“We miss you,” I say, like always. Then there’s this quiet on the other line. A gap in the noise…
I know what you’re going to say. I should have known better. I should have been smarter. But I didn’t,…
Monty says: “You can’t stop a freighter.” I’m next to Julie, whose real name is Jules but no one pronounces…
She can see him in her mind’s eye. He is young but looks old, his hair a sparse mess of…
Tonight, like every other night, she exits by the side door, places the remains of her dinner on the step…
Everyone in the audience but you is wearing designer clothing. A magician prances on to the stage. He wears a…
But you are nine now, Mam will say, nearly ten for goodness sake, shouldn’t you know better? That’s what she’ll…
Let me tell you about Spanish Moss. Let me tell you about horsehair beards. I tangle my mind between the…
"Next, please!" She's passive-aggressive this morning. But of course she is. She has to deal with us everyday. Our dour…
Blisters on my heels grind inside wet leather. A sticky ooze seeps through my thermal socks. An Appalachian Trail trek…
Thunder wasn’t always a sign of a reckoning, but these days everything seemed to be moving in reverse; like the…
I will be devoured. Immersed. My totality submerged. All will be changed beneath the surface of this water. A world…
It always took her ages to get ready, smudging kohl precisely into a faux-trashy look, winged eyeliner on the top…
I drive my pick-up up to our trailer and park close enough to the front door that I am able…
The drum rests beneath a spotlight, behind a wall of glass. Painted regimental green and embellished with golden banners listing…
They filed into the room one by one. Each with their own freshly hewed scars. Cheap coffee and day-old biscuits…
A wave of dogs, all teeth and snarl, crested the hill, flowing like water toward Julia's car. “Damn that GPS,”…
The incessant noise of the tavern chafed Ben Walsh’s nerves, provoking his already agitated state-of-mind. Abrasive music. Jabbering conversations. Rattling…
“Fireflies, you’re the work of the devil.” Her voice carried as though the fog wasn’t dense enough. “Do you see…
It appeared in the garden one morning, the drought, by then, eleven weeks and counting. He was sitting on the…
After supper Wayne and I cuddle on the couch. I wrap myself around him and listen to the voices of…
“Yeah, I dropped my house on your sister and took her shoes. They weren’t really her color. Clashed with that…
He shadow-boxed in the center of the mat. The venue was small, his locker room smaller, but that's how it…
When we were young, seemingly surrounded by feigned chaos and forever friends, we built a fire together. We carried imperfect…
Death came and sat outside our door. Some noise he made awakened us. My husband stuck his head out; ”Why…
The Colonel’s mantra: If you’re not ten minutes early, you’re ten minutes late. Catherine was very late. Her father waited…
Didn’t surprise Doc Johnson to find the clinic’s front door chained and locked. Sheriff Coulson told him as much when…
I’m at home: 3D models of pink and orange Pepsi cans haloed in pixel garbage strewn around, a statue of…
I met him in the early morning hours outside the Protestant Cemetery in Testaccio. He was smoking a cigarette and…
For Drake I’m ready to run to the grocery store when I realize I don’t have my keys. I should…
He was waiting in yet another line, already becoming used to the Army's “hurry up and wait” routine. Hurry up…
In the spring, the streets flooded with litter. Dhriti went out daily, rummaging for anything either their family could use…
A woman is breathing heavily in agony, digging her short, brittle nails into the kitchen carpet. Her husband, fast asleep…
I like Kevin Jenkins for lots of reasons. His failure to offer me sympathy after I tell him about my…
Where is Nancy? I don’t know why she’d think it’d be okay to meet up in a closet. The plan…
"If you want something done, give it to a mom, y’know?" She had it all planned out in two weeks.…
Mama and Step-Daddy went looking for what happened to the Rapture. Before they left they told me to watch Daniel,…
I sat up on the psychiatrist’s couch. No, I didn’t lie back. “How are you today, Stephen?” Dr. James asked.…
On the Friday before Easter Carolina wrapped the egg in her coat and set it in her backpack. It’s perfect,…
She watched her husband across the table fidget with his greasy hamburger. Next he twisted his napkin into a rope.…
When they say good bye, she says wait. He turns, opens his chest. Listen to the rib bones stretch—not break.…
Before Mama left us to spend time with her real children, everyday, she would write a quote on the small…
The smoke escaped from the basement window. He heard the siren twisting through the street. The pinkish sky warmed his…
I’m haunted by the best kind of ghost, the type that lives in between drops of rain and among grains…
Raindrops hurtle towards her, burst and stream down the glass pane. She stands on the inside, watching the cityscape languish…
We didn’t know where we came from. We never used to think about purpose or destruction, beauty or brevity. All…
In the morning, hearts rolled in with the waves. Some bobbled like buoys loose in the ocean, others trailed long…
Joggers, bikers, street signs, picket fences, mailboxes, a bun missing its inner hot dog, stubby shadows cast in unison, shadows…
The oncologist with the worst bedside manner of any doctor on our staff had just left my patient’s room. “Pancreatic…”…
The black-clad landlord of the White Lion Inn passes Bhavi on the narrow staircase to Lady Dalrymple's room. She’s concentrating…
On Sunday Bill Petry drove his 1917 Ford Model T, which he bought when he was 15 years old for…
The four of us were just hanging out by the edge of the lake in folding chairs, sprawled comfortably in…
I looked up at the clouds breaking apart the summer’s blue sky. So hot, the flies would stick to you…
Her song rang out in her ears, coaxed from the strings of the violin like a snake from a basket.…
Callia’s father whispered to her: “And on the peak of that old mountain just outside your window, there lives a…
She sent the book back to him on a Wednesday. She told him that, but the book didn’t arrive until…
Mother wore her sorrow like a wet, fur coat. Every step she took weighed her down. She carefully dragged her…
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