fbpx

flash fiction

Blue Mama

Blue Mama

Without thinking too deeply about it we presume ourselves to be adequate parents. The baseline assumption is that we would do anything for the babies; we would fight, we would kill. Tonight somehow they outnumber us, although there are still two of them. The one who...

read more
Calculus of Devotion

Calculus of Devotion

—after Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express Clare dresses like an ice cream cone. Chocolate lace, vanilla skirts. All of it melting down her limbs, rain or slush. Faye is glad that Clare doesn’t give her an ounce of recognition—not when they sit next to each other in...

read more
Nothing the Wind Might Sting

Nothing the Wind Might Sting

1.  The bird flies in through an open window on the first story of the hotel. The bird flies through a patch of dead zinnia stems in a splintery wooden window box where the cat sits sometimes in the nice weather, his shiny fur full of the dust that is...

read more
Ornithology for Girls

Ornithology for Girls

The bluegrass is dry and sick.  “You were the one who survived,” I say. “You were very fortunate.” You are an expert forager, combing the orchard for chokecherries and fallen apples. The summer worms are desiccated and flat, but you capture a young garter snake...

read more
Scene in a Public Park at Dawn, 1892

Scene in a Public Park at Dawn, 1892

“No small sensation has been made by the report of a duel between two ladies. . . . The [disagreement] was regarded as so serious that it could only be settled by blood.” —Pall Mall Gazette, August 23, 1892 We call it an emancipated duel—the duelists, seconds,...

read more
Big Red

Big Red

It started out small—a red speck hardly noticed on the Harlem sidewalk. Maybe it drifted down from the heavens. Maybe a bird scavenged it from Central Park. Maybe it grew from a crack in the concrete. However it came to be, passers-by stepped over it without a glance,...

read more
Origin Story

Origin Story

There was a man—there is always a man. There was the crush of gray wave. The cold bite of late fall.  She’s been down here for so long, she can’t remember things she once would never have thought important enough to forget. What the ground feels like. What smoke...

read more
Rabbit

Rabbit

Years ago, his mother brought home a rabbit. “Make it fat, will you?” she asked him. The boy held the shivering rabbit in his arms, wrapped it in his coat, folded its body into his, feeling the weak tremble next to his heart. It was spotlessly white like fresh snow....

read more