I’d heard my hands were too fat for a six string. That’s a crock, The Jazzman said, that Israel dude was a thousand pounds and played a ukulele. At the music sh...
“I’m not understanding why they’d want to hire you exactly?” My husband pokes a hunk of burrata with his fork. I sit across from him in the busy, rustic Italia...
I have spent the last 72 minutes willing Luke Ryan’s bladder to fill with piss. And although he currently seems very happy slowly sipping his drink, I am poised...
Six months from Christmas, I started scoffing all my lunches and dinners at Reggie’s, the food joint I worked at, where everyone had head lice, despite the stri...
My kid busted his lip real good this morning. Hit a crack and flew forward on his face. Do we have to worry about any of that? No, right? It was gnarly. I think...
A forever friend she called it. Someone to play make-believe with and to hold close to her chest at night. Someone who would never leave her, like her parents h...
Sitting in traffic on 42, Madeline wanted a cigarette. Chloe sang haltingly to “Deceptacon,” her voice dropping in and out of the verses. “Wanna disco? Wanna se...
ACT ONE
(Thick red curtains are closed across the stage. The room is dark. Ushers in red uniforms, pamphlets in hand, line the isles. There is an orchestra a...
The second ambulance and I almost touched.
Two weeks earlier, I was the one inside, but no one was there. I was reading Villon before I received the news. Tr...
Who cares what psychiatrists write on walls? is the answer I get, but it has nothing to do with my question. This is how things have been going ever since Trevo...
If on a winter’s night a writer sits down in a darkened room with only the glow of a desk lamp to guide them, they may find themselves writing about the thing t...
I heard the helicopter above my home. The noise lasted for several minutes as I lay in the bathtub. It got louder and louder as if the helicopter were going to ...
I’m shedding. Skin. There’s scabby flakes accumulating in all of the carpets. And in my sheets. And in the bathroom rugs. To be honest it’s a nightmare for derm...
Saturday I drove out to the lake. Or at least someone told me it was a lake. The thing I was prepared to swim was lake-size. When I had arrived, it turned out ...
Left Pong Paddle stared across the parking lot through the windshield of its ‘13 Toyota Corolla, its iced coffee (almond milk, no sugar) momentarily forgotten. ...
The whole thing, the whole trajectory, changed when I realized I had left all my cash in Des Moines. Most of the cash had come from selling off the few things m...
I fiddle with the lock. The key always jams. I have no idea why, but every time I try to get inside our mailbox, I have the same trouble. I guess I could tell R...
Christmas eve, Pete Summers was about to climb down the ladder from the roof of Clara Lessing’s home when a large brown pit bull came running down the driveway ...
You should get some sleep, but instead, you're on your laptop in bed looking at a photo of a beautiful tree. The background is nicely out of focus and maybe the...
You would think that something attached to threads moves in a jerky manner that resembles Pinocchio's clumsy walk, but her movements are smooth and graceful, wh...
The screams upstairs were distinctly Ivory. “Ew- Dad! Kill it! Kill it!” she cried.
“Where is it?” August returned, clunky sigh accompanying.
“The bathroo...
“To be a mermaid you have to be able to swim. Or at least float with grace,” said Mr. Beekman.
Of all the girls, only three of us—Millie, Francie, and I—felt...
With the money he'd made from his 23-house Newsday delivery route, Carl had purchased a TV, a VCR, a $400 Centurion Accordo Tour de France Limited Edition twelv...
The wolf had come for him. Come to devour him, swallow him whole until he was more beast than man, his flesh turned to fur. He knew the beast well enough to fea...
After a myriad of meandering meanwhiles, the crux of modern civilization came sharply into focus: lines. More specifically, what lines are, what they can and ca...
The specialist is coming to see me today. I’m told the first session will be a consultation. If I “cooperate” she can do for me what she did for a woman in Tall...