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I wait, listening for your footfalls, heavy, weary from your work. The sun will rise soon. I have readied the water; warm for your bath, cold for your clothing. The latch clicks, then the floorboards protest in solemn rhythm as you enter our home. Even in the sickly predawn light, I see the bow of […]
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In another world, Icarus ignored the sun. He soared through the air and relished in the ecstasy of flight. His arms were wings and he was the most glorious of birds. The sun became nothing more than the cause of the sweat upon his neck. With a different pen, Icarus soared not to the heavens […]
“This song’s about you.” He leaned against the slick mahogany bar, watching a jazz trio perform Lady in Red. She glided past him and stood a few feet away, so as not to appear that she followed him in. “It’s more purple,” she said, tugging at her dress. She bought it a year ago. Tonight, […]
Hot July, the taint of creosote. My brother sniffled, wiped his nose with the back of a dirty hand, leaving a brown smudge. Converse sneakers shifted, dragged. “Well? Go ‘head.” “Just a sec.” Steven Santilli’s sand blond hair, damp with sweat, leaned over the gleaming red, white and blue Evel Knievel on his stunt cycle. […]
Running, through the vines and tree roots, encircling my legs, pulling me back to the Napalm Apocalypse. I hear the blades of the Huey just in the clearing ready to pick me up, I can’t move, I’m trapped in the jungle that wants my soul. I want to go home. Everything I own I carry […]
I peered out the passenger seat window of my mother’s car. She shifted from second to third gear. “You want to be committed; I’ll commit you!” she spewed while the car lurched forward. My sister laid across the backseat in the fetal position, facing away and whimpering like a sick dog while my mother sped […]
I watched his face, nutmeg brown from the sun and criss-crossed like alpaca tracks, grow paler by the day, a yellow hue to his beautiful eyes that the doctor said was because his liver was quitting on him. When he died, I paid two hundred dollars to have his gold tooth extracted by a dentist […]
Tommy’s cousin Gabe. Tommy’s distant cousin Gabe from Stillwater, Minnesota. Tommy’s cousin Gabe, related to my husband through divorce and remarriage, in lieu of actual blood, who arrives on my front porch at dinnertime with a duffel bag and fanny pack. Industrial-sized. Gabe. Two hungry blue eyes, trapped in a giant body. Infinite, knowing eyes […]
“It is not enough to be the possessor of genius—the time and the man must conjoin. An Alexander the Great, born into an age of profound peace, might scarce have troubled the world—a Newton, grown up in a thieves’ den, might have devised little but a new and ingenious picklock. . . .” Diversions of […]
I visited St. Louis lately, and on my way West, after changing cars at Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about forty-five, or maybe fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat down beside me. We talked together pleasantly on various subjects for an hour, perhaps, and I found him exceedingly […]
The woods were already filled with shadows one June evening, just before eight o’clock, though a bright sunset still glimmered faintly among the trunks of the trees. A little girl was driving home her cow, a plodding, dilatory, provoking creature in her behavior, but a valued companion for all that. They were going away from […]
The first time Anna heard her son’s heartbeat, it was through the doctor’s stethoscope; a hummingbird beat, a frantic thumping; a small frenetic voice. She was a linguist, the first of her circle of friends to leave academia to have a child. “Language Acquisition” had been her specialty before Harper was born. “I don’t get […]
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