Fiction |
“Versions of Miriam”
“What would it be like to spend an entire night here, not waiting for anyone? The thought edged plausibility. If she was lonely and looking for a place to drive and feel unbothered, this would be the place.”
Fiction |
“The Rock of Ephyra”
“The rock was beginning to understand that each day would be different, each day bringing subtle changes in the experience of being rolled up the hill and released to forge new trails.”
Fiction |
“Toads Down Deep in the Loam”
“On the morning of his first day of school, Henry pours the water out of his thermos when his father isn’t looking and slips a toad inside. He leaves the lid loose so it can breathe and finds a cricket in the yard so it has lunch.”
Fiction |
“The Cards”
“The request for more money came through email early one morning, before Jeff was out of bed. Mark had just made a pot of coffee when his phone pinged. Chelsea’s mother is requesting an extra $1,200 for supplies to support her pregnancy …”
Fiction |
two selections from My Body is Paper
“He was already shirtless and, as he started loosening his belt, the metal buckle picked up reflections of my room, my face on the bed, my look that this will solve everything, that I can lose myself here, that I can’t let my mother rule my life.”
Fiction |
“Teeth,” “The Man and the Woman” & “The Carpenter”
“Since the floor was a darkly stained oak polished to a sheen, the ceiling could see his own reflection if he looked intently, as one lover might look into another’s eyes and see himself captured there.”
Fiction |
“Incandescent Obsolescence”
“But our life expectancies hover around 203. More than enough time for an average of four twenty-year marriages with a full gender array of spouses — organic and AI — with the final decades of our lives whiled away on the well-appointed Archipelago of the Old, wrinkle-free and comfortably numb …”
Fiction |
“The Reading Lamp”
“At the end of the hallway, I could hear sounds of excited voices speaking in loud tones behind a blue painted door. This was the voice, if I was to believe my assignment, of the person who was said to be the greatest reader of literature in the world.”
Fiction |
“Eid Mubarak”
“Her dad said it like a punchline: ‘In December, there’s a card, white inside, and handwritten: Eid Mubarak. I nearly fell over.’ Few of their neighbors knew that Eid was the Muslim gift-giving holiday. Back then, even fewer cared.”
Fiction |
“A Collision”
“A tall short-haired blond woman got out of the Honda who looked familiar, vaguely, and then both were standing in the cold in the alley, and first one said, Are you okay? and then the other said it and Caroline said, My puppy dog’s a bit rattled, and the other was so sorry.”
Fiction |
“Woman, Blue”
“The voices had crushed him once, with their weight and numbers, with the fears and anxieties and regrets and the losses they spoke of. He wouldn’t let that happen again. He wouldn’t go back to the hospital.”
Fiction |
“After School Special”
“Because of its location in the back of a mostly evacuated mini-shopping strip, The Falls was always close to empty — the perfect rendezvous point for students joined in something, Liza put it as ‘beyond mere cliquishness.'”
Fiction |
“Walking on Our Knees Backwards Home”
“… let me assure you the pain eventually will subside, but the memories will continue to haunt. Even after 65 years, my imagination wades to the bank of the Tallahatchie River where my son died.”
Fiction |
“Infection Control”
“The citrus scent hit her nostrils, the smell of long ago summer days while polishing the big cherry dining table to the sound of Little Beth and her friends chattering outside while they played four square on the driveway.”
Fiction |
“A Terrible Gift”
“I’d always had trouble dedicating myself to one mode for long. I oscillated between the abstract, the realist, the symbolic. Beyond the embarrassment, it was a source of fear that I’d never be more than a tinkerer, a dilettante.”