“Cheng Ho didn’t go just Cape Horn; treasure ships visit Australia and America. His very advanced compass. Not just point north-south. Show east-west too.”

I remember the tan guinea pig, dead of dehydration. Through the wire bars of her cage I viewed her body. She lay stiff on her side, stretched out, as if in her guinea-pig dream she had been running through grassland, open and close to the sky.

[continued from part one...]After sweeps, my schoolwork started to slip. I had trouble paying attention in class, and my workbooks and tests came back from the teacher marked in ketchup red ink. I had always been a good student, and this academic…

The two were huddled in a corner of an alley, joined by some others that I’m sure wandered into the darkness when they realized they were far from alone. That alley was the one off Market Street. I used to steal candy from the corner shop when I was nin

Conceptio culpa Nasci pena Labor vita Necesse mori

...a blunt thrust of a face, uncongenial in profile, and the ubiquitous green cap that says John Deere, with the yellow ideogram of a deer for graduates of our local schools.

The trainers looked at her and smiled and they were still one creature with four legs and two heads. The old man’s left eye moved in sync with the younger one’s right eye.

I talk wands and magic and how women aren't supposed to care, but I do, and she talks length and girth. Her fiancé has neither, she makes an illustration with her pinky and says that if they don't marry within the year, she's dumping his ass and we

Here’s the story as compiled from the scantest of clues: The writing on the back of a stall door in the restroom of a twenty-four hour restaurant under the Gowanus Expressway.

My dad drove a Model A Roadster and had a photo taken of him on a hunting trip up in Wisconsin with one leather boot up on the running board and a .22 caliber pistol in his hand like Ernest Hemingway and Clark Gable rolled into one My dad ro

over tea & saltineshe read melike an obituary

To make extra money, my father wrote music reviews for the Calgary Herald, and on Saturday nights, he went to hear the Symphony, or into recital halls to listen to the chamber music that was being performed around the city. He took me, once, to a performa

Somewhere along tomorrow, I will forget I have the right to do this.

Years After she can go home.

as long as you have some snacks up there I can be brave