A truck with Oregon plates arrives in San Diego at dusk. When the driver slides open the cargo door, his Christmas trees are coated with lumps of snow and sheets of ice. There’s so much white he imagines an artificial forest smothered in flocking spray. …
Stuie’s always been nothing special. Even he knows, deep down, he is a consistently mediocre kid with straight Cs, not particularly handsome, and so-so in sports. In games, he eventually gets picked, but only after a long time, the kind of player where other kids …
She was standing in line. The line had rounded the corner of the street. She didn’t actually see the beginning of the line, or where it led to exactly. She just ducked in line, right past the corner. It was the middle of the day. …
“It’s ok,” said the girl, setting her books on the counter. “I’m home-schooled.” The librarian would not have even considered the girl’s age at the time of day until the girl herself drew attention to it. But it couldn’t be denied. She was the only girl in …
Sunny. It’s always sunny. Buskers sing, pitch their CDs. Vendors sell cut fruit, fragrant sausages and onions. John slumps in his wheel-chair, one foot on the sidewalk, the other shot off in Vietnam, then the leg amputated up to his knee. The subway empties. People …
You Remember… Grandpa Victor telling you that possibilities are like Poland. That he said this because just like the realm of possibility has borders that shrink with age, he’d lived to see the borders of Poland be divided and divested, a broken wishbone …
Openings lead to openings in darkness, miles below. They shovel ore into steel bins pulled to the surface and dumped, hour after hour, day after day. Clink clink go their mattocks and picks. No one knows the time. Years ago, many years ago it must …
1/ The animal: I am 10 or 11, and we have 2 pet rats: Ren and Stimpy. Both are large, soft, and white with butterscotch patches. Sweet, as I didn’t know rats could be. They like to perch on our shoulders like furry parrots, rushing …
Robert, the stalwart woodsman, fought desperately to fend off the monsters. Their strong bodies leaped at him over and over. As they came at him, his thoughts were of his love, Juniper, and the light that shone from her face.
I hear the water first. Weaving through the woods, molecules in the millions, connected and splitting, crisscrossing currents. Water toward which my soul always wanders, and I wonder the questions elicited by currents running through my mind, slipping through my fingers: what is weight, worth, …