i'm obsessed with shorts. short. stories.
i dreamt i was narrator of a play. it was impromptu and you were allowed to bring your script on stage. the lights were low and i could barely see my pages. when the lights came up, i was stuck in a ditch beside the road. and the extras were streaming past like prisoners along a … Read more
the museum gifts you with a new painting or sculpture to carry in your heart until you visit again. last time it was a portrait of Lupe Marin by Diego Rivera. it’s skewed. i can’t even. it’s so fucking beautiful. her hands, her hands. there’s a story in those hands and i want to know about … Read more
The Beauty of a Busted Fruit by Natalie Diaz When we were children, we traced out knees, shins, and elbows for the slightest hint of wound, searched them for any sad red-blue scab marking us both victim and survivor. All this before we knew that some wounds can’t heal, before we knew the jagged scars … Read more
on the airplane, my husband befriends a guy from NJ with two sullen teenage boys. later, at the ferry, we meet them again, only this time the wife is there. she arrived a day early and has bought copious amounts of groceries now piled in a plastic wheelbarrow. she advises us to get a golf … Read more
the driver accelerates into a steep hairpin curve and my gut is in my throat. i’m thrust forward on the bench seat, and grab for the hand rest, miss, scrabble, try bracing my feet against the metal legs of the front seat and fail. slide across the bench and end up in the middle when … Read more
the boys at the good luck club. the boys at the good luck club are setting up for the Friday night dance party. they’re lugging in the record players, plugging in the speakers, checking the connections. they’re decorating the tiny room with balloons and banners. the lights are pulsing to the beat. the boys at … Read more
What We Have by Ruth Stone On the mountain the neighbor’s dog, put out in the cold, comes to my house for the night. He quivers with gratitude. His short-haired small stout body settles near the stove. He snores. Out there in the dark, snow falls. The birch trees are wrapped in their white bandages. … Read more
i’m in the United Lounge at O’Hare and these are my thoughts: this is a soulless place, filled with lonely boys pulling carry-on luggage behind, talking stock option language on their cell phones best dealt with by listening to Fatboy Slim ‘Praise You’ on repeat and a gin tonic there’s something in the air i … Read more
i’ve been edited before but not like this. i’ve learned a lot about craft, much more than i anticipated. my editor, Sean Virgo, pointed out my tics (in that moment), lazy phrasings (consistently describing characters by their eye colour), and repetitions of indirections (think, wonder, consider). the indirections, the indirections! his ability to hold eleven stories in his … Read more