Fiction |
“Fengshui”
“When Ying died of an unknown disease at age 36, her only son, a thin and short 12-year old boy, could neither afford to hire anyone to move her body to the family graveyard, nor do the job by himself.”
Fiction |
“Family Portrait with Trees”
“From the window, a girl looks back at herself. She is six. There is a storm in her bedroom: thunder, his breathing near her ear.”
Fiction |
“I Saw Elvis in Palm Springs”
“Claudia was in Palm Springs because she’d made a fairly lucrative commercial deal with a Japanese yogurt company and wanted to go somewhere alone where she could pretend she’d come by the money in a more respectable way. Like phishing or selling drugs.”
Fiction |
“The Peshaman Fragments”
“When at rest, the mouth often does not relax but returns to a puckered, circular kissing shape that suggests it is at once both open and closed, an orifice of both inbound and outbound potential.”
Fiction |
“Facts About Bald Men,” “Up On the Roof,” “The Bald Man and His Twin,” “Return of the Kleptomaniac” & “Prayer for Hair”
“I stole the last hair from a bald man. The blackish-gray hair was surprisingly long, maybe three feet in length, and had wrapped around his head several times and dangled down his back.”
Fiction |
“Adventure”
“We watched the dog for a little while. He peed again, then we got back to our activities inside Vee’s house. We did not know how to play with a dog, what he was for. Later I walked home and wanted a dog for myself, but not one just to look at.”
Fiction |
“Otra Noche En Miami”
“Santi and I came here — I mean Miami, not Mango’s — to be queer as fuck. Queer as possible before being shipped back to Honduras, closeted and impossible.”
Fiction |
“We Are the Daughters of the Witches You Never Noticed”
“It might as well have been a wild shadow, a melancholy tone from a dream that echoed into waking life. And that echo had been growing louder.”
Fiction |
“Maestro” and “Through”
“The number of firepit watchers increased and it struck me that more than a handful seemed disapproving of my presence. Had some mention of me turned up in the county newspaper concerning one of my interests?”
Fiction |
from Monsters Like Us
“Viktor will remember France as if he were looking through binoculars, just held the wrong way around. The numbers in the lift of the Clara Schumann Hospital are absolutely clear as he goes up the five floors to Surgery II.”
Fiction |
“Cape Flyaway”
“How long had they been searching for land on this voyage? His eyes ached and burned from strain and wind and salt and sun. And he had seen it, he knew, he had seen land …”
Fiction |
“Something Special,” “My Mother the Realtor,” “The Salesman Grows Sad” & “The Salesman Gets A Suit” from The House of Grana Padano
“‘Beautiful people become beautiful by living in these houses,’ she would say. At home, late in the evening, she’d tell me, ‘The business is drying up.'”
Fiction |
“Creation Myth”
“When we were small, barely out of babyhood ourselves, the nights we slept at Grandmother’s house at the edge of the blue-black woods, she sent us to sleep with the story of how babies came to be born of women.”
Fiction |
“The Last Golden Hour”
“We wasted the day looking after my oldest son who does not want to be looked after. Your unbonded stepson. He wrecked his car on a Kentucky backroad. His girlfriend clawed his face. Cuffed, no charges filed.”
Fiction |
“An Ingenue Attends the Freshman Formal” & “Tally of a Loss”
“9: my age when you taught me to save myself for the right person
15: my age when I thought he was right
15 ½: my age when he wasn’t”