Fiction

Jungle everywhere, bugs everywhere, heat everywhere. Tired horses lower their heads and sheathe their ears to squeeze through the branches, resin coating their sides. Ximi clicks for them to stop and slips to the ground. One of the horses neighs for the dark barn that...

When she opens my eyes, the wind gives shape to golden waves endlessly lapping grey asphalt that separates fields of bearded barley from canola. Divides golden wheat from stubble field from pastures peppered with sage. A gentle roll, occasional tree. A subtle change...

At the pharmacy counter I wrote down my name, birth date, and prescription info and handed the note to someone, who located the bottle, stuffed it in a bag, and stapled the bag shut. I paid, nodded, and didn’t say a word, not wanting to encourage a dialogue. I pushed...

After we had lived in Plainfield for two weeks, my father drove my mother and me around town. “Listen,” he said. “The worst, filthy, run-down street is called Pleasant.” He turned and gave me an expectant look. “What’s that called, Donnie?” “Irony,” I said, and he...

I’m running my little real estate scam in Casey Key around 2005 or so when I find Stephen King’s wallet on the sidewalk. Inside there’s no cash just his Maine driver’s license with his big dumb face on it and a couple credit cards. Canceled already probably. There’s a...

I share a bottle of wine with my clone. We tape Papier-mâché wings on the sides of a hospital and throw the hospital off the edge of a cliff. The wings don’t flap and the hospital was always too heavy to ever know flight. Everything becomes the ground once it meets...

Like an elephant, I cried. It was the best simile I could invent at nine years old for Sam blowing his nose. But I was the youngest and the table conversation, a babel of NPR and academic reportage, took place in the air above my head. For those forty five minutes, I...

May is, frankly, fed up. Yesterday was the six-month mark where her relationships usually die. Today is six months plus one. She wants to end this, but can’t break an old man’s heart, so she breaks some eggs instead. Only this time she’ll add something disgusting....

His diagnosis was that I lived life like I was preparing to leave it, and his prescription was sesame oil baths. Once a day for fifteen minutes, not while menstruating. Paying special attention to the scalp, ears, and soles of the feet. It didn’t have to be toasted;...

We run, jumping over tree roots, my flip flops sliding on the mossy stones, we run until we reach the clearing, where we lean over, hands on our knees, breathing deeply and you shrug your backpack to the ground, unzip it, and pull out the vodka we stole from your...