I told him I’m not a fan of face tattoos. I usually avoid talking usually during tattoo sessions for this goddamn reason. Sometimes I talk too much when I am hi...
Drip by drip, this magic. Painstaking, precise, plausibly deniable. More than, really. Unbelievable. Which is why it works so well for Carly.
When the bitch ...
When my children were born I worked in the prison. Wasn’t I scared, people asked, being pregnant there? No, I’d tell them. It’s fine. The officers run a tight s...
“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.” That’s what they all say, and so that’s what my naïve self took to heart when si...
Jess Curtis stooped at the window and stared at the dark. Wind rustled. Foliage shook. Valerie Finn and Noah Thacker, eating pizza straight from the box, sat on...
Coyote’s scat smells of stolen meat. With no thought to the impacts on the ecology, he’s taken to filling in prairie dog holes – my prairie dog holes – with dir...
It was late when Palmer called me that night. He was always calling late. Always just leaving some show, some party, always buzzing on some combination of chemi...
When the bus stops in front of our house, I walk off slow because I am afraid that Bertie’s body won’t still be in the bathtub. Mother Julia made me go to schoo...
Dear Literary Event Coordinator(s),
The following document is a rider containing various provisions to assure you of a smooth and professionally delivered of...
Sam hadn’t always been a ghost. Of course, she hadn’t. Like the rest of us, she’d once been fully real. But then, like Marty McFly’s sister in Back to the Futur...
There was a rumor that the old Hot Dog on a Stick was closing the weekend before Labor Day. Picture this, a young Vito – that’s me, with older bro Nico, Mom an...
My 25 milligram edible gummy is just starting to hit when Jamie tells me he doesn’t want a relationship. He says he’s going to Chicago soon, on account of his a...
It’s true about me, Mr. Kral. Masha pinged me from the deep, but I was drowning in a sublet near Waukegan Harbor. Drowning with distinction when the signal came...
Those weird little guys, they called her “Nature Lady,” because she talked to them about the flora and fauna in the woods around Camp Adventure. That ...
Finally, some whalers found me. Bobbing on a lone plank, stranded at sea. The large one who hauled me up smelled of fish and vinegar and when my forehead slippe...
The honeybees find him in the night, worming through holes in the window screen, delivering messages through urgent movement atop his bedsheets. This fuzzy vari...
THIS is last week in the square of a village, there is a pink town hall and a pink library but it is better to imagine than to know which, at a peppering of tab...
The first rule for a giant squid in trouble is to get the hell out, and fast.
But I was never any good at following the rules.
#
I’ve jetted up from the de...
I needed a place to stay. I’d been having problems with my girlfriend, and now I had to move out. Rachel, my best friend, told me she had a spot available in he...
I huffed it up the hill. Sweat stung at my eyeballs and my face was a hot blister. My next tour group, the 3:30 crowd, was waiting for me up at the top. I had f...
Before Janis drowned, I told her I wanted to come back as an eagle after I died. To build a nest high in the mountains and to hover over lakes. Eagles mate for ...
So, you want to know the truth, eh? The truth behind my tattoo? No, not the one etched into my forearm. I know exactly the one you’re talking about, boychik.
...
“All right, Mr. Jenkins. Can you tell our viewers what happened last night on your farm?”
Fred Jenkins, a long-time farmer in the rolling hills of Western Pe...
The tall people surrounded the snacks, talking to keep others from talking. The boy sat beside the birdcage with a blanket over it and waited for a gap in the m...
Uncle Kev says, “At the end of December a white fog rolls into Venice that fades away the days and calendars from memory.” Uncle Kev’s dead but speaks to me all...
The drag queens squeal as the bespectacled reality TV host saunters into the neon-pink workroom.
“Hello-hello-hello!” The host flashes a Chicklet-white smile...
If I thought I needed the extra bus fare for my emotional baggage, I would have bought the extra seat. There’s a lot of us in here going to where the line ends,...
I wandered internal deserts for eons in search of an external friend until I found the Amazon Fire TV. Hello, hello, desperate to meet you. To hear you. And hea...
It was once the tallest building in Chicago—part of a pair. 601 feet tall and someone is falling from the top of it. You think you know her. You recognize her. ...