“Drowning”

Mort was cooking his own breakfast, as usual, when Rita stormed into the kitchen cradling something wet in her palm.  He thought maybe the couple’s therapy was working and she’d gone out of her way to be kind, and as such, had forged wild mushrooms for his omelet.

“Grab me a basket for this thing, Mort, please.” Rita’s cheeks were flushed. He wished he didn’t notice these things. It’d have made their thirty-one years together so much less work if he’d been less observant.

 [More]

“The Second Hand”

It’s dark in his bedroom and the boy is having a hard time steadying himself on his mother’s shoulder while she peels off his pajamas. Same way she takes her time skinning a mango as to not waste a bite of flesh, she slows her undressing of him to the cadence of the Blue Angel Hornet airplane clock on his nightstand, matching the tick-tocks in half-time. Her fingernails, not long, just barely past the rump of her fingers, graze his back and arms, his belly and knees reminding him of bath time, bubble sculpture, the sun’s last skid across his mother’s brown oily nose. [Order to Read More]

Thank you Passages North.

And in the words of someone much richer and more famous than me:  ”I’m gonna pee my pants.”

Bennington, in snow

I’m behind that middle window in the middle building, playing at not being a middling writer.  That’s the hope, at least, and the reason I fly a couple thousand miles to arrive at the snowy stoop of Bennington. The January residency was swell. Jim Shepard was there, of course it was. And on that note, I share with you a mere token of his brilliance: “We write to feel better about ourselves, but it almost never makes us feel better about ourselves.” Unless, you’re Jim Shepard and you almost always never suck.  Anyway, a few of my favorite journals  did actually make me feel better about myself and embraced, so kindly, a couple of my stories. Thanks to Cream City Review and River Styx.

"The Second Hand" appears in the Fall 2012 issue

"Drowning" appears in issue 87, 2012

Check out the journals and order a copy. It never hurts to support the endangered print animal.

was around 130 beats per minute. Slow for a girl. A girl’s heart rate in the womb typically beats faster than a boy’s—usually closer to 150. This isn’t meant to foreshadow gender reassignment or a turn with women or spite for men. Just the opposite. I’ve since fallen in love with every man I’ve met and in the process of doing so, mapped futures that never panned out. Maybe my heart had decided at conception to beat like a boy’s, to conserve for the crushing demands later on. Maybe it was clairvoyant.

[READ MORE]

[READ MORE]

[READ MORE]

The doctor says, it’s everywhere. From kidneys to heart and back to bone, cannibal cells divide and deploy. What does it look like? I’m thinking the industrious carve of tiny termite alleys. Or a delicate pattern of holes and fissures that, in the right light, are pretty — maybe a doily heart, a snowflake liver. Maybe it’s as straightforward as dry rot: chipping, flaking rottenness. Such a pretty girl, people say.

2.

At the grocery store I buy antioxidants. Blueberries, strawberries, green and orange things. I hold a cancer-fighting rainbow in my basket and ask the clerk to help me find soy milk. Rearranging the store wasn’t such a great idea, I tell him. I liked it the way it used to be. Everything made sense before, not now.

3.

Sunday she complained about stomach pains. It was after our run, we were having lunch, with margaritas and our kids. Cheese salvation on the patio, under fog and a fringed umbrella. Stress, the divorce, have a Tums, I said. She mostly talked about custody. I nodded, offered to help with the kids. How about Wednesday? She asked. I have a doctor’s appointment.

4.

The Friday nurse asks, Here for Allana? Go on in. I’ve brought her a book and a block of bittersweet chocolate, with almonds. I imagine she’s laced up like a corset from belly button to sternum. Blue pen still marks the entry points. Three hours pass and I’ve read her half of the book and eaten the chocolate. Now my stomach and hers ache. It’s everywhere and she doesn’t even know. I never keep secrets from her.

5.

What does it look like?

6.

First impression of Allana: face too perfect for good conversation; long, blonde hair, blonde even at the roots and pillow lips. Legs lovely and lean like the L’s in her name. On Sundays she smells like real maple syrup because we meet for long runs after she’s grilled pancakes for the kids. She always writes in cursive. The hospital gown doesn’t cover up her calves, muscular still, even though we haven’t run in two weeks.

[READ MORE]