Around the dining room, the guests make small talk. The talk of some is so small, it is quark-sized. Some…

Mother is desperate.  Baby will not stop crying.  Her toothless maw quivers, her eyes slit, her cheeks squinch red.  Mother…

He hands me a place card, high rag-content, from our glittering table with someone else’s name in calligraphy so elegant…

That the dog didn’t bark was the first sign.  Who acts like that, who, tell me who acts like that…

Because the princess was dying of love for the suitor, the suitor who was so athletic and so strong, the…

Living so closely When the girl falls off a cliff, a few people hear a shriek, see a black dot…

We smoke because the nuns say we shouldn’t—he-man Marlboros or Salems, slender and meadow fresh, over cups of thin coffee…

The telephone poles looked like crucifixes. I had the time to contemplate them, and that was how silent it was.…

In summer, waiting for night, we’d pose against the afterglow on corners, watching traffic cruise through the neighborhood. Sometimes, a…

It was 10th grade, the year of Hurricane Isaac, which mowed down the mighty oak in the teacher’s parking lot,…