Tag: fiction
-
Experiments in Time and Place
I wake up as a hair. I wake up as a tree frog. I wake up as a vintage postcard. I wake up as underpants. My waistband is too tight for her—I dig into her hips. I sit in the washing machine all day and all night. I prefer being on than being off.…
-
Late Summer
Saxton jammed the butt of his rifle into his shoulder and aimed it at the flash of movement. He kept the front sight trained on a slim form as it moved down the steep slope of a hill his pa, long dead from typhoid, had nicknamed Baldy Knob. His higher position on an…
-
Labor of Love
Thomas heard the knock on the door right as he was sitting down with a cold beer for a break. He was both annoyed at the sound of the knock and felt a sense of guilt since he had no real excuse to leave the door unanswered. He let out a sigh as…
-
Call
What do you do when the burglar winding in your window at night bellows, Call, call the police? There were knives in the kitchen, sticks along the wall, a screw gun and the OED. Mother Earth sang a Capella when she cloned it ten. It could have been more. Then came the report: sleeper lurches…
-
Used car lot shepherd
Before smart devices most lads aspired to astronaut or president. Sister Mary Black an’ Decker prayed that I would grow into a priest. She was a bit strange. I loved her. With her right sleeve rolled and ruler poised, her bicep damselfly tattoo smiled. Neighborhood pals and I pooled our money buying old Mercury. Didn’t…
-
Big Stick
Golden carambola – star fruit, appropriately enough – thrive in my southern uplands, their sweet flesh swelling with anti-oxidants for my colonists. Higher grow the Yangmei trees, their scarlet fruit bursting with healthful juice. Fields of teff spread across the plains, swirling into bright green waves when caressed by winds from the southern…
-
For the Win
I scroll through new names for the band, a list eight entries long on the notes app on my phone. Almost Roses. Athens Attic. Saturday’s Missing Pages. My head is bowed like I’m praying, but really I’m just avoiding eye contact with Tyler. “I don’t want you back,” I say, finally looking up.…
-
These Artists
1. Flowing. You are a pedestrian: you are in enforced imprisonment. This is the phantom you are plagued by. You hear whispers and shouts permeated around the sidewalk that you try to float by in loose motions; sometimes songs bubbled under skin, common sense suggests this resonated in privacy. Like say some kind-a…
-
Antares’ Benediction
Reeves loved Antares, seven hundred times the size of our sun, the giant red star in the constellation Scorpius. Five hundred and fifty light years away sounds like a lot but only when constrained by gravity. The distance shrinks to nothing when freed by death, the opposite of gravity, serving as a celestial…
-
6424 Avenue Z
Before she died, Grandma made me promise that I’d take care of her house. How could I say no? She was the only person in this whole world who didn’t look at me and see a good for nothing loser. Mama didn’t even tell me who my daddy was before she up and…
