CW: kidnapping But we were so young and our parents were hippies, and our music came from the garage band up the street that played Wild Thing over and over because it was the only song they knew, and it was summertime and the only rule was to come home before dark,...
So sudden you didn’t have time to put your hair on. So loud your eardrums hurt. Who are these people who have stormed into your kitchen? Why does the woman loot your cupboards, the man produce a knife? The woman’s voice reminds you of your daughter’s, but your...
We feed the ghoul behind the elementary school crumbs of bread and throw sticks at it to make it dance. We watch its grotesque movements, our heads ducked down, squinting in fear, until our mothers call us for dinner, garbled words painting a language that skips down...
I’m scratching my name in the pew with my car key. I’m daydreaming about what it would be like to have a robot arm. Or a robot heart. I’m sitting while the believers line up for communion. I’m not invited, which is fine. The only flesh I want in my mouth is yours. I...
in her bedroom like a secret, only we can hear it through the door. My big brother, Lou, took off with Ernesto, the boy with the neck tattoo of skull and bones, who picks up my brother in his Cadillac car, and they both will be gone for a week. I scatter the little...
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...