100. Someone has broken into the Global Seed Vault. 99. If you kill an ice bear, you have to tell the Governor. 98. If you do not, you will be subject to loopholes. 97. The Governor has an expensive Spanish carmine speedboat he takes for unlawful...
Honey, Mississippi 1949 When it gets cold in the south, mama wakes you up much earlier than she used to, and here you are now having to help clean the hog head sitting in the kitchen sink. Its tongue is long, and black-beige-brown. Its teeth are broken-glassed, and...
Goth Nanny The baby sees black eyeliner circling dead eyes that teach skepticism, or something more sinister, a desire to detach from society. The buggy is covered in black satin. Goth Nanny likes to hang out by the cliffs, along the sharp stone edge, in view of the...
Planting Season “But what if?” Woman leaves the unfinished question hanging in the air, touching her swelling stomach. Man already knows what she is asking. “We will find a way to make it work. We always find a way.” Heavy Rains Season The baby smiles and she...
The kitchen lightbulb shatters above our heads. The filament burns red and fizzles to nothing. It is an explosion from light to black. We breathe hard in the aftermath, check each other for broken glass and he says to me, I can’t be here anymore. # Chicago-Read is...
Sometimes the name they give you is all wrong. It's really just meant to be a simple, two-word phrase to let people talk about a particular shade. "Honey, do you prefer Autumn Sand or Copper Slate?" or "Can I get two gallons of Alpine Storm?" ...
That morning, Ted began buffering. One minute, he was Ted, coffee cup in hand, talking animatedly about this thing he’d just heard on NPR. The next minute, he was a rainbow-colored pinwheel, spinning. I’d never taken Ted for a Mac guy, so I found that part odd. If...
Walls Her nest is too tall by the time Molly realizes she can’t climb in. “I left my tools inside. Should I stop?” She asks her husband, who looks at the wall so hard the plaster cracks. “Put some of those plaster shards around the outside, honey? Like a fence, you...
As if covered in invisible glaze, her bread bakes pink. She buys new flour, new yeast, sends it into the oven a butter yellow moon. Still it comes out pink, a darker shade each time. "It must be the water here. We'll get filtered; don't eat it," her husband...
These days, when I pull up the old photographs, most people still attribute the resemblance between Lydia Lissing and me to the uniforms. My husband, who has always refused to see it, has never gotten past this first reluctance. “You all look like...
waiting to cross. My heart tick, ticking like a stupid clock. Eddie and his dark hair forest, his blue eye ocean. Eddie, who is only 15. But to me, he is a man. In five years, I will catch up. By then, I will be beautiful. My hair will be a riverflow. Eddie...
It was a bright, gray day with no breeze, and she had just finished digging a grave. She’d woken that morning and her turtle had not. How should she feel on this first day without Tulip? Or on all the days without Tulip to come? Sad, probably. But sometimes being with...