Yonder Years Ago So down a synapse they tunneled, carried past sensation burdens: memory waves chute-oscillated, irrigated crevices and canals to harvest minds and remember electric journeys in flashes and sparks. Disconnected and torn, hand-in-hand they went,...
Punch Me he tells his son. It’s okay. You need to learn. Tenderly, the father kneels, and the boy makes a four-year-old fist, aims for the broad chest, tensed and squared and fleshier than the father remembers himself. Little knuckles against aging skin. A slapping...
The birds only come once a year. Always on my birthday, just as I’m blowing my age into candle smoke and choking down a sliver of over-sweetened cake because my mom came home early from work to bake it and she gets mad when I don’t eat. But the birds are back, which...
You and Lisa tried to save your marriage by taking some community education classes. Intro to Pottery started in March, Beginning Scuba was slated for May. “Maybe learning new things will rekindle our love,” you told her. “Maybe learning new things will prove our...
She slipped her thumb into her mouth, sucked in a heavy swallow of air, shrunk her waist to the size of a noodle, and disappeared down the kitchen sink drain. Slithering down the pipe, she shrugged the darkness on like a winter coat. There was a piece of dark meat...
Michelle Dong lived with her father and fourteen cousins in a butter-soft house at the end of the block, the only family in the neighborhood not directly related to us. In another country, Uncle Dong used to be some kind of teacher, but now he sold parts of his car....
I had been snow-drifting through December, on slow trains and delayed buses, ending each day with a long icy walk past other bodies, also losing grip. I could not get home that night, none of us could; Spaghetti Junction had filled with snow. We decided to camp at the...
That summer in Dallas my roommate Tina stole a Penthouse from her father’s stash. We wanted to see why Miss America surrendered her crown. Tina scoffed at the black and white photographs. Disgusting, she said. What sluts. I thought their bodies were tender and...
She will look tired. He will look bored. They will sit on the edge of their bed, close enough to indicate they are still married, far enough apart to indicate how it is going. They will have called you to their bedroom, which will be immediately weird. Your parents...
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...