My childhood was one of outdoor games, cuts, bruises, torn clothes, muddy shoes, mischief. Even though playing outside strengthened mine and my sister’s immune systems and we rarely got seriously ill, minor cuts, infections, and colds were unavoidable and somehow inevitable. My grandma Lena took care of […]
There’s a camera crew in the bushes outside the restaurant when I walk in. I can’t see them but the bushes rustle as I walk by and I hear the whirring of what must be cameras. It’s our first date. We sit at a white-clothed […]
She’d never liked how she looked in pictures. Photos were fine, actually—most were pretty accurate, the diminutive black machines saw to it. It was the paintings that annoyed her, prompting her to hide behind the nearest water-logged cloud. Which would explain why they unfailingly depicted […]
Jeremy served his hundredth morning expresso while watching Beth. Continuous orders interrupted his view as foam hearts, leafs, and kitties dominated coffee requests. Instagram was a barista’s worst nightmare. Yet Eliza “Beth” Adaline predicted with unearthly accuracy what pleased. She danced through her morning shift, […]
Sue and I lived together in an apartment right after high school. She attended junior college and had such a crush on this boy, Troy—a classmate. He sang in the choir, too. She would drag me to all of his shows, and I’d egg her […]
Saturday morning before Easter, 1958, Dad helps a little boy, who holds a brown paper bag, out of our Buick. Mom and I have stepped outside to greet them. Dad introduces Arlen to Mom and me. He is from the big stone orphanage next to our […]
People used to tell me I turned into an unattended band saw on high when I drank. They said I lost control. I recognized control as an idea. Intangible. They thought it was a cap you could screw on. But that’s shallow. We never had […]
“Where the fuck are you?” Everyone’s looking away from the woman on the bench with her cell phone. We’re waiting for the BART train to San Francisco and it’s chilly on the platform, at least for Northern California. My husband and I are both bundled […]
1. My lover rides her bike through the wind and rain. Her head is shaved on one side. The hair on the other is jet black and hangs long, wet and stringy. Rain beads on her bright red lips as on a car recently polished. […]
Mond thought he was living on the edge because he made his money trading stocks on the thinnest of margins. Despite the volatile risky nature of his work he was bored – perhaps because of the efficiency of his underlings and their machines, maybe because […]
The ER in Chadron, Nebraska is crowded. We’ve driven down from the rez because they won’t take a white guy at the IHS hospital. They tell Calvin and Augustine to bring me here. They say I’ll be okay. At least half of the people in […]
In the parking lot, I forget that there are other humans on Earth; aware only of my boots in the gravel and the snap of the breeze off the bay slinking its way along the hem of my dress and the sleeves of my jacket. […]
