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 […]
Waiting for BART
“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 […]
Wind and Rain
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. […]
Thin
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 […]
Appendectomy
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 […]
Next of Kin
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. […]
Aglet
I drape the tie around my collar, the wide end on the right, the small end on the left like the internet video says. I play the video at least three or four times to catch everything the instructor is doing. I’ve never been good […]
Harriet Goes Outside
Harriet needed to leave the house. It’d been days since she’d so much as stepped off her front porch. Yesterday, while preparing for a walk to Lake Michigan, she noticed, through her bedroom window, a bug climbing the inside of the outside screen. She pulled […]
Muted
When I walked into the bar at noon, I reconsidered my outfit. I had bought a two-piece skirt set at Target on my way to the apartment that I’d change in: a borrowed space, a secret, its walls hollow and beige. I contorted my body […]
Merry Sang
Merry sang. She whistled, she hummed, she scatted. Merry played the spoons and the Jews Harp as well as the ukulele, the washboard, the comb and she’d drum on anything and everything. She attached cymbals to her knees, hung a harmonica around her neck, and […]
Turn Neither to the Left Hand Nor the Right
Anne had packed tins of food into her backpack. “Come with me?” she said. I shook my head; there was no point discussing it again. “Where will you go?” I asked. “Does it matter?” She was right. They’ll find us no matter where we hide. […]
Settling in Limbo
Have you ever been so emotionally spent and mentally burnt out that you take an 11pm walk alone without a bra in thin clothes only meant for bedtime looking in the clear windows of a mattress store like it’s a candy shop? A man who […]
