Most recent stories

Prayer for a Flash Fictioneer

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Molly was a fanatical Flash Fictioneer, devoted to her miniature art form, the bonsai of literature, the tiny tales popularly known as flash fiction. She filled an entire blog with daily entries of the stuff. She came to flash…

77 Words About Nothing [02-02-2013]

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Connecting the dots the past two weeks, I’ve concluded you’re pregnant again.

The Conversion

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She became suited to herself only. She no longer tried in any way to fit, she fought the molds they created and kept moving in her own direction. Often forward, sometimes a bit backward, and she rightly scaled her own Mt. Olympus and there she sat with he

Size Times New Roman

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“I’m making a dress,” she said, feeding the pages through the sewing machine. He didn’t know how to answer. “Are those my books?”

My Yoko Ono

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When one hears the siren call of artsy high school love, there’s not much one can do except go ahead and crash on the rocks, sending incense sticks and candles flying.

Refer Madness

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There is an old Indian story which says that if a person inhales basil fumes, then scorpions will grow in the inhaler's brain. We have basil growing all over our garden, so this explains the absolutely stinging sensation I feel in my cerebellum after cutting the basil hedge…

hands

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He cleaned off the pump with a steel brush. Then he took it out to the pressure washer. Out there was where a lady that looked like a witch used to move around and sit on the fences like a crow. The air was humid, and the men were dressed in heavy blue coveralls.…

Liberty of Cooking

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My dish was slut ("all done" in Swedish). It tasted good though aroused no draft, of mutton, for example. My grandparents' bed held flat. I filed alone, in realist kitchen, reading Froeding, standing, striding, continent as gym.

Lesson Plan

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Maybe tonight, maybe next week,/ maybe only in my waking dreams,/ I’ll teach another lesson-

Epigenetics

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Wanted: Woman with wit, repartee skills, education and looks. Conversation, verbal dualing and ??? Respond to Seeker.

Police Mistakenly Release Murderer: An Analysis

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He has no plan, he needs a plan, he has no plan, he needs a plan -- the two thoughts bounce around inside his skull like racquet balls.

Chimes of Coins or Branches

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It must be some sort of Freudian twist, but as her cold fingertips draw rings on my navel, I think of my mother. Here, her body watches my tongue, asking my lips to curl into the letters of her name. I can't get erect. I remember my mother's face—her eyes almost…

Wind Enough in your Sail?

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Don’t think you can play God with me There are enough songs To fill the heavens already I don’t need you Whispering in my ear Gone virile, are you? That’s what they used to say About me too

Consider the Living

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we're not at war / with the world. We have papers.

Mourning

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It was a phone call we never expected. You were so full of life and joy and the sound of your laugh was pierced in our minds. Two strokes. That's what they said. No explanation, no back story. We worried we would lose you. Immediately, all of our memories with you started…

Broward County Love Song (flaxen from the sun)

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If the little buildings had hair the hair was as if sleeked back some and also flaxen from the sun. Men walked past there and of course women also all in the requisite wear of the world. We dashed felt pens on curb-sides writing our names in the world and way in behind…

Automatic Writing: A Cure for Writer's Block?

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Knocked off around noon, drank some retsina, checked Olympics results. Can’t find Medea’s motivation. Why would she kill her kids?

Morning in Louisiana

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Sunlight slaps the asphalt hard. Steam rises. It looks like thought. The sweet vapors of rumination.

Already There

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Best not look. But the children would.

Bigfoot Night

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The giant stood up and scowled menacingly. "WHAT! You don't think bigfoot is real?!" Big John's face seemed about ready to scowl in on itself.

Dutch Stake

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The Trust Fund editors said they are leaving Germany. They have been there while I have stayed home to tend American refugees.

Nude Body of Gutters

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You lose her. In the vortex of guttered water, her tangled hair entwines. Tornado-like. Her body spinning boisterously at its core. Her name: Izra—the wooden doll with black pebbled eyes. …

Amends

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We met in graduate school. We were both taking a course on teaching using the case study method over at the Business School. I was from psychology. She was from biology. We were both getting Harvard doctorates. But as many people…

The Budweiser Sign and the Ghosts of Saturday Night

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It waited and witnessed the seasons complete a grouping and form a year. Then it watched them do it again. Winter, spring, summer, fall. It watched from the inside of course. But it could see. Big sliding glass doors and long and wide windows stayed the course also, way…

Beginning, Another Bright Red Day

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Pick up any stick or stone and you'll find the path again. Pick out any lone star and it will shine just for you. The rascal wind simply enjoys messing about with your serious nature. Listen to its…

A Forest

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Her mind was full of fresh air and swung like a bee over clover.

Vienna

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I remember thinking the seasons are arriving later every year, as if the world has been slowed by the weight of graves.

Laces

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I see those shoes and the status they confer, and I know what they cost.

Laughingly rejected by The New Yorker

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...and we laughed.

Kandie Contretemps

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She sat in a tall chair and there was only one time in the interview that she took her sunglasses off. She didn't really take them off, but just pulled them down for an instant with thumb and forefinger in order to look out at something going past the window. They said…