On the school bus you should have seen them, monkeying around about wheels, bottles of non-alcoholic beers, Rock-Paper-Scissor, two kids having a shootout with six-piece revolvers, percussive wet claps from fingers squished between armpits, cheers, and...
Alison was a cheerleader, and the second-prettiest girl in our class. These qualities seemed extremely important to us at the time, at least until she accidentally killed one of the football players with her car. It was a BMW, a red convertible. Her father, who did...
It was our first once-a-month grandmother-granddaughter date at the JCC. I hopped on the treadmill while you did Jazzercise, all ladies over the age of 60 – or maybe 70, but at the time, I couldn’t tell the difference – and one man, Norman. Ink blots on his bare head,...
You meet him at your niece's birthday party, where the kids run feral, coked-up on pink juice and icing. While he performs his act, your sister is with her mum friends, drinking warm wine in the kitchen and whispering loudly about that mother in the PTA. The men are...
Write down your goals for tomorrow. Write down your goals on a small pocket-sized notepad so that you can take it with you. Don’t make these goals for tomorrow a “to-do” list. Don’t do this because some of the things you’re bound to include in your goals (like...
The whole bird lay naked on the cutting board. Iris had received the wooden board as a wedding present. It held the scars of years and years of tiny careful cuts. The body hardly looked like a recognizable creature without the head, the feathers, the feet. She could...
There was a lot of dust on them mens. Me, keepin’ off the wooden sidewalk while keeping an eye, a close eye, mind, on them rowdy boys of Mist’ Showet, all I could see was dusty mens. They wasn’t wearin’ more than rags over they parts, and some not even that. In my...
The foam pillow, one of several retrieved from his parent’s house after the sale, smelled of Bengay. Meant for the guest bedroom, which his wife at the time redecorated in what she called “Victorian Chic”—an effort, under compromise, to both appropriate and purge the...
In a blur, a blind of grass, the horse. Dunes. At your right, ocean collapsing on the edge of Virginia. The flea-bitten mare ahead, returning with her empty saddle. Here comes a horse: head bobbing, miff of sand from lifting hooves, to pause two strides off. The mare,...
From her window seat on the train, Ruth watches the cluster of teenage boys on the platform. They posture in the dusk as a tall girl, black hair swinging in a high ponytail, draws near. As she skirts the group, their boldness swells, and the boys whoop and...
Agnes rocked us in her boat. Cradled between waves, we were sleepy. She sang a song from her deepest throat: A cup will fit perfectly into your mouth. A bowl and a spoon, too. A sun will release brilliance that you must not look at. But a moon will softly glow, will...
It is my job to gag her. Mike and some of the others have her pinned to the ground. The rest are watching us. My hand is covering her wildly-moving mouth. She is trying to bite me. This enrages me. I reach my other hand into my coat pocket feeling for the...