Fiction
Red Sky in the Morning
An indecisive breeze pushed leaves dripping with sunset and dry as death scraping over concrete, around tree trunks and benches and over curbs into eddies in pirouettes and swirls. It was then that Liza knew. The beauty cut too deep now. Her yoga became impassioned and neither milk nor sugar softened her coffee anymore. Nine [...]
You Were With Me
You used to go down to the pier at the end of our road to watch the fishermen come in. You, my daughter, used to go all the time, stalking the men in yellow, rubber overalls while they grappled with swordfish and bluefish and striped bass and all kinds of other slippery things with little [...]
Fall
Like a leaf in a leaf-stand I made once. Wrapped in a silver, spiraled coil, floating, perpetually falling. A three dollar, drugstore vanity mirror that changed with the seasons, reflecting the sky. A smooth oak leaf soaked in autumn finery. Rich, dark veins spidering out to jagged edges glowing and alive. Liz and I were [...]
Casa
There’s a top to a wooden wine-box hanging on my door. It’s fingerprinted and dirty around the edges. There are tacks along its edge from where it used to be nailed to its bottom. On this lid is a pen & ink type drawing of a house on a hill in a hiding valley with [...]
Qtemp
Sheets blue as old ink encircled Jonah. The comforter, frayed and soft and orange, lay by the foot of the bed – the only non-blue shred of color left in the room. Lips caressed a slimy patch of mattress moist with saliva. A singular and nearly invisible white scar cut his face in half. With [...]
To Laugh
Old Man Westin had a laugh could shake peaches from the trees and make crows hop and snicker and me hold the stitches on my appendectomy. He was our neighbor for 47 years but I think maybe mama and papa might have made him family because there wasn’t a day he rocked, smoked, or ate [...]
Meringue
Red silk cut short. Legs long and dark, dark brown, gurgling smooth to black leather sandals. A pointed foot size six on the classroom floor, another like a bobbing second hand that must be turning hours. Oh god, matching underwear and I can’t move my eyes. “Richie? Richie! Take your eyes off Ms. Diaz and [...]
Rosy Red
Jenna’s mother had a sister who longed to be a mother but could never have children. So it was that when Jenna’s mother became a little round, and then a little rounder, a lovely lady and then a lovelier lady, Jenna’s mother’s sister became a fluttering, everyday presence in the Whitaker household. There with a [...]
That one note
“There’s a hell of alot contained in it ya know. The note I mean. Yeah, and what ya think of first off is the physical technique. So ya get yer lips nice n moisturized, but not sloppy see. You stretch em, and prep em, clear yer throat and snatcha sip a water. So then ya [...]
