Suburban Flight In her bedroom, she places her voice in the music box given to her at a young age by a family friend, a groom she had been offered to in marriage, twenty years her senior, who will die in his sleep tonight with a chicken bone wedged in his...
May 18, 1973 Sedan, New Mexico Smoke hugs the flare of Momma’s nostrils. “Why don’t you ever follow the rules?” The last ember of her Virginia Slim glows stubborn, even after she’s ground it into the ashtray. I sit criss-cross on the floor, hold my breath against the...
The baker’s skin, burnished from the heat of very hot ovens, is soft but taut. The taxidermist likes to pretend when she’s fondling the baker that she’s fondling an hourglass. The hourglass. What determines the duration of all activities, provides a semblance of order...
Five of us dodge the storm in Tammy DeLuca’s bedroom, even Kevin, who stays dressed. One at a time, we lie back, spread-legged and flustered, approximating grit. Here, Tammy directs a ray of light between Maggie’s legs, is the birth canal. We see only skin and the...
over the parking lot of Aldi’s. They bustle to snag unattended shopping carts, return them to the carousel, accept the quarter deposit from the locking mechanism. They position themselves like athletes or secret service agents, waiting for an old blue-hair to leave...
I’m in Flamineo’s trailer when we hear the ringmaster yelling that the fire-eater left to marry his high school sweetheart. We’re in bed, pretending I’m a stranger in the audience and Flamineo’s guessing my name. The ringmaster must knock three times...
The sugar beet factory across the street from my house exploded when I was eight. It flamed out in a blue blaze of molasses that lifted cars a mile away. This was panhandle Nebraska and such events were extraordinary: seven silos down, the eighth held erect by the...
You stuff chunks of a frozen bird into your pockets. Outside, the world is spinning. A homeless man asks you for some change, so you hand him a headless bird. He holds it like a broken child. With the bird parts stuffed into your pockets, it almost feels like flying....
The crab apples had disappeared from Sophie’s grove across the street last week, but I didn't notice until Sophie got lice. They were easy to spot because she pulled her braids so tight, scalp bright and taut in the hairline, a barren main street that the tiny...
The End Me at his door, trying to convince him I was a good person. But I wasn’t a good person back then, needy and egotistical, kind and then poisonous. On his doorstep that day, David told me I was like a creeping bellflower, a weed people mistake for a flower and...
Nationwide that year, 128 officers were killed in the line of duty. My father is number 87 in the official report, arranged chronologically by death date. When it arrived in the mail, glossy and sleek like a new car brochure, my mother barely glanced at it before...
They were everywhere: the I.C.'s. You couldn't spit without hitting one. You tripped over them in the street, on the train. The population had suddenly doubled. The wealthy were going in for “minimally invasive treatments,” and coming home with gleaming shiny...