Maybe I was twenty-one or so, somewhere around there, young anyway, and I don’t remember much about where this all took place, but our teacher sat on his desk and read us the magnificent one-sentence story “The Dinosaur” by Augusto Montessero of Guatemala, which goes:...
The love story starts here. I am dreaming of Orlando Bloom when I’m awakened by an icy poke into my bare shoulder. It feels like a cold bony finger pressing deliberately into my flesh. Flurries swirl outside, bathing the room in a white glow. I catch my...
This is the third year that she has haunted me. She is pale and slightly shimmery, as if brushed with frost, but her cheeks are stained with the soft pink of little girls her age. She trails behind the other children as they jam their feet into snow boots and search...
Today is my double mastectomy. Today is also my birthday. As he numbs me, the anesthesiologist wears a pink pointed hat, the string, thin as a Tuohy needle, stretched tight under his chin. Nurses patter around the room, prepping the procedure and blowing sound makers...
A baby grand piano appeared after Billie moved in with her son. Fourth-rate elegance. Plywood garbage. The stroke took away her walking bass. Billie couldn't trust her left hand to play the blues, even after two years of physical therapy. Drinking a glass of water was...
Demons cavort in the darkness of trees. Slender, knuckle-cracking things, whispering a wasp language. You stop your ears with moss, but the what-ifs and why-nots are siren voices. So you take scissors to your hair, swap florals for denim and Elvis for Iron Maiden,...
The creature who lives in the well makes noises at night. Small noises as if it doesn’t want to disturb us. It disturbs me. Right now, everything disturbs me: taking dishes out of the dishwasher, folding laundry, talking with Rebecca. “It could be a frog,”...
My brother is the smallest man in the world. I’m not even kidding. Most of the time, he lives in my jacket pocket. One kernel of popcorn will keep him going for weeks. It’s hot in there, in my jacket pocket, and hard to breathe, probably. But he needs so little air....
They came to town, one riding a lawnmower, the other carrying a leaf blower, their hair shorn tight and crisp like hedges. And their teeth: white, too white, so white they were blue. Flashed those teeth at everyone they passed as they wandered around our town. When...
did you hear about the shooting? my cousin jasmine texts. i tell her no, open up twitter to see if something’s trending. nada. she responds: they shot a girl in her home. she was my friend’s niece. the details: a ten-year-old, a drive-by, some gang shooting up the...
In our neighborhood, the dumpsters peel orange but not like citrus. White liquid seeps from their underbelly. Nothing drinks the dumpster milk. Tomcats fight in the periphery while a family celebrates in gunshots. No one thinks of what happens when the bullets...
I’m not interested, she said, in restless craving, space-time music, outside combining elements. Images only, she said, with a shake of white hair. Minutes later—on time, she said—life, non-human, began to unravel. The Russian beside her—brave, grassy, invasive—was...