Eighteen Dollar Shoes
When the fishing derby was on, you could almost walk across Lake Erie, from Port Colborne to America. Hundreds of small boats, maybe a thousand, resembled stepp...
Category: Story
Catholic High School Confessions
I grew up Catholic, and there is much about the solemnity, and pageantry that still inspires awe. There is much that is beautiful in a Catholic Mass, and the ri...
License Plate Peon
The ‘64 Jag XKE theft wasn’t worth the sentence but they framed me with five sport car grabs to clear the books I truly believe. I bowed to the judge like an aw...
All of the Stars in the Earth
Miller discovered Brutus’s corpse in the hayloft. The yellow tomcat had been scarce for days, well beyond the bounds of his usual secret life. Now he lay ...
Old School
Warfield is old school. He had figured out his methods early, found that they worked well for him, and has stuck with them without deviation ever since. Therefo...
On Second Thought
Arrival: Oxygen. Atomic number 8 sucked into lungs feeling the burn of an element plentiful, flawless in its ability to energize them. They draw it in, obliviou...
Rocket Science
Down the end of my street is a gully that has somehow escaped the ravages of suburban development. It hasn’t been stripped of vegetation and reshaped by b...
To Richard Milhous Nixon, on his Birthday
When Thomas Cornell hacked and cleared land for a cabin, getting pine sap on his hands and wiping springs of sweat from his dusty brow, he didn’t know you would...
The Art of the Foley
On the front lawn of the hospice, a juvenile seagull picks at the remains of what appears to be a female blackbird. The gull plunges its beak into the breast of...
The Loss of Superlatives
Rosie, an eighty-seven-year-old woman, who lived in a well-fortified home in a remote part of Maine, regretted her charge to eradicate the word “great” and now ...
Dreams out of Bugtussle
People get accustomed to seeing something one way, then it doesn’t matter how many changes you make, they won’t see the change until you make them s...
At the Zoo
The day following my release from the psych unit, my father took me on a trip to the zoo. We were the only ones there, save for a few mothers and their small ch...
His Favorites
It was a day for offerings, but only if she’d get up. From the bed, out her window, she squinted at the receding line of grey trees. Beyond was the yard, anothe...
An Army of Frogs
I’m a dead frog and I don’t say this with any pity or understanding or shame it’s just an observation that people seem to like us, like us a bit too much becaus...
Catch and Release
Mitch asks me when was the last time I kissed a woman. I count my thumb and index finger on my right hand, hold it up for Mitch to see, add years at the end. Yo...
Bubble Wand
(I.) “Mm.” Kim looked around, startled, as he entered his bedroom where his sister was deep in sleep. Her brow was furrowed and she groaned again before rolling...
Introduction to Other Cultures
As the chair of the hiring committee, I kept sneaking the application to the top of the pile, until we had a live interview. I confess that I was startled when...
Lonesome Prairie
Holding a cup of hot green tea, Marie sat in a white wicker chair on her front porch and watched the fading sunlight cover the Badlands formations in pastel sha...
What’s In a Name
On this day that was to change my life, I looked out over the sea of students, monks in front ranging from very young to those whose age exceeded my own. Behind...
Two Dollars to Show
I am a lonely old man in the corner booth of an all-night diner. On the table before me is a plate greasy with fried eggs and hash browns, a plate I’ll eventual...
By Truth Told
“Your daddy got the TB, huh?” Lori Lane said. “Yep,” I replied. Lori dragged the toe of her shoe across the dirt. “My daddy had it, but his doctor cleared it up...
Adapted from Rabbi Nachman’s “The Rabbi and His Son”
He had a little room in his father’s house where he used to sit like the little room in which I sit, bare, featureless, but with a Samsung laptop and a Canon pr...
The Dying Composer
Having been discovered on the floor of his loge after a Wagner opera, the dying composer is snatched up by friends and taken to his town house. The stern doctor...
Reckless Biking
While riding my bicycle, I almost hit a police car that is idling on the street. “Take it easy,” a cop says to me through his window. I realize I’m breaking the...
Now You Know How It Is
My girlfriend—get this—keeps asking me to take her back to my place. Aren’t you rushing things? I say. You may be twenty-eight but I’m nineteen. We do have a go...
The Thing You Fear
I work in a very old building. Parts of it were built in the late 1800s. Over the next thirty years additions were tacked on to the front of the original struct...
Rose of All the World
At five and forty, running a chore for a manager he despised, he drove for the first time to the outskirts of the City. The shabby, chugging misery of a car he ...
Ilh-eobeolin
I lose my husband in the heart of the Gwangjang Market in South Korea. A woman stops me outside of a mattress marketplace and points at her eyes, then at mine. ...
The Suppressed
(Curtains rise on OPHELIA, who is sipping tea at a café. YOEL walks by. They both make eye contact.) OPHELIA – (Under her breathe) Ugh. Here it comes… YOEL – Op...
Once A Fine Notion
The old house stands on the edge of a mudflat along the Cheyenne River. Most of the white paint that once made its wood glisten in the sun has peeled off and be...
The Voices in Roberta’s Head
Roberta and Joel sat on Roberta’s couch. An episode of Sherlock played on the TV. Roberta stared blankly at it. Joel looked longingly at Roberta. The voices in ...
3 Brief Flashes
ANXIETY ATTACK I remember being thirteen and coming up from the depths of our backyard pool after holding my breath longer than any human being ever had. I expe...
