Kat goes missing again, but not really. She’s where she usually is—passed out, pants on backward, in the Wawa parking lot. Because this is her third or fourth offense, the dean of students summons her parents who drive eight hours through a freak April snowstorm. This...
Their old landmarks are charred, the ashen sludge slips into her sandals. Find me at our pit, he’d said. Where you dig for fossils. He should be waiting for her, always the last to arrive. Pine cones crackle, the sap hums in creaks and snaps. Stumps hiccup out sparks....
1. When planning your garden, be aware that certain herbs are highly invasive, and may overwhelm a garden, choking other plants. Properly managed and carefully monitored, however, these herbs are both decorative and useful. In order to keep them from dominating more...
The Stuntman Cuts through the water like shears through velvet. Like an arrow through the apple on a little boy’s head. Like any number of sharp things through lovely, yielding softness. The suit and mask hide his tan leanness, his dark curling hair. The webbing on...
Because Davie Gray is protected by the blood of Jesus and his scripture-spouting pastor daddy, he stays in the classroom practicing his times tables while the rest of the class waits outside the gymnasium, sleeves rolled, for the stern-faced nurses to swab and stab us...
In the footnote: He read Basketball diaries, but he was Latino and he did not wear a shirt titled, Latinidad, or at least not out in the daylight, or it was that his shirt titled Latinidad was too tight to fit into. He could finger roll like Ewing. He could fake to...
Legacy My ancestors were star smugglers. Becoming a mule was their only way out of the darkness. They would hide the stars in their bellies and wear thick clothes to conceal their glowing midriffs. Every night, I thank them. For the sacrifice they made. For what they...
Bed A gift from Kayla’s father, who put her head through a wall when she said David Bowie was holier than Jesus Christ. He buys a twin; he doesn’t know (can never know) she’s sharing it with me. When the box arrives, we assemble the bed together and tell each other...
After three days, my husband comes home with the moon pillow, still in its plastic. I don’t know how he paid for it. Maybe he didn’t. “For you,” he says. Nothing else. He’s stopped explaining his disappearances and I’ve stopped asking. I already know more than I want....
I wanted to live on Love Street when I grew up. To steal paperbacks about salvation sex and hide them under my bed. I told myself that one day the sound of my name would make a man sick and then well. The dog was my very first love. We were criminal friends. She'd...
Image You’re always embarrassed in photographs, holding up your hand, saying wait, wait, and it’s your hair or your makeup or there’s something in my eye, and I breathe slowly, fighting the urge to say but you’re beautiful because you don’t want to know. Later, you...
Around the dining room, the guests make small talk. The talk of some is so small, it is quark-sized. Some talk easily. Two or three flirt. A few examine gesture’s blueprint in the kitchen. Snippets mimic augmented fourths. Pitch echoes reinforcement, denial, and...