(Repetition Exercise) The man falls down a flight of stairs. When he reaches the landing, he shouts the name, “Clarence!,” though he does not know anyone named Clarence. The man falls down a flight of stairs. Before he hits the bottom step, he notices a spider hanging...
Amber Day 2
Why Each Person in the Room Wasn’t Responsible for the Note
(Weakness Exercise: I feel like I always struggle with backstory, so I only wrote backstory to see if I could draft something that works.) Because Uncle Paul grew up as the only son in a family otherwise dominated by girls. Because this upbringing made him acutely...
A Clown, a Fox, and a Priest Walk into a Strip Club
A Clown, a Fox, and a Priest walk into a Strip Club The clowns gather in the strip club. They are tired of the cliches. They were tired of all this coulrophobia—clowns are scary, clowns are murderers, clowns are smoking cigarettes in the alley behind the building,...
A Daughter’s Vow
*This needs a lot of work, but I thought I'd toss it out for any suggestions. Thank you all!* A Daughter’s Vow I don’t care if you ignore me, hold your newspaper like a shield, puff your smoke around the edges, the only sound the tinkling of ice cubes in your glass. I...
Who Knew?
When he wanted to date her exclusively and she told another man who’d asked her on a date that they were now dating exclusively, and afterward he spent a night with a former girlfriend, she should have known. When they went to the wedding of the couple who’d fixed...
Accessible by Boat (And Even Ours Should Make it)
It was after the path palmed itself away into a terrace of moss-laden brick. After the breeze started in the early morning as if to say see? there is mercy yet. It was after Orion's nightly roundhouse kick from bay to gulf. Nightjar swiveled to mockingbird. It was...
Three Visitors in Search of a Visitation
After they were summoned they met around a firepit, as was Custom, four figures in boots, overcoats and scarfs, robed and wrapped in layers of fabric, though the fire was roaring and they had of course no fear of cold or need for warmth. It was unclear yet who had...
Past Due
She was already a liar. You little shit, like hell you paid for that watch. We were at Woolworth’s together and I didn’t see you buy anything, not a damned thing. She was already beautiful, but would only realize this when it was no longer true. She was already off on...
Seedy Motels
Seedy Motels Detective Sergeant Archibald Flett’s eye traced the line of roofing nails across the floor. It was impossible to see from the bed what the nails were intended to fix or if it was working. These places, seedy motels, were like Forrest Gump’s Ma. No two...
Occupants Sway Gently in the Breeze.
Cut the watermelon. State empathetically the sand-tide is low to yourself. Put the trash by the door. Bring the trash down the stairs. Wiggle the trash through the antique fair. Drip drop. Swords. Albums. Bottles. Vacuums. Irons. Crates. Polished cutlery. A house with...
A story about sadness and death could start with
The month my husband’s father died we hoped and held our breath and wished that he’d recover, and when we heard he had tested positive with Covid after the first hospital admission, I knew the end of the story and felt complicit at least in the editing of it. He was...
Organ-Grinding
Backlogged tacos fester inside a body ill-equipped to digest them. Rotting burgers demand too much from some orifice or soft shell of skin to find a way to the quickest exit. Instead, they stack and seep within you for decades. Heart, spleen, intestines, liver,...
Tumbling Down
(Repetition Exercise) The man falls down a flight of stairs. When he reaches the landing, he shouts the name, “Clarence!,” though he does not know anyone named Clarence. The man falls down a flight of stairs. Before he hits the bottom step, he notices a spider hanging...
Why Each Person in the Room Wasn’t Responsible for the Note
(Weakness Exercise: I feel like I always struggle with backstory, so I only wrote backstory to see if I could draft something that works.) Because Uncle Paul grew up as the only son in a family otherwise dominated by girls. Because this upbringing made him acutely...
A Clown, a Fox, and a Priest Walk into a Strip Club
A Clown, a Fox, and a Priest walk into a Strip Club The clowns gather in the strip club. They are tired of the cliches. They were tired of all this coulrophobia—clowns are scary, clowns are murderers, clowns are smoking cigarettes in the alley behind the building,...
A Daughter’s Vow
*This needs a lot of work, but I thought I'd toss it out for any suggestions. Thank you all!* A Daughter’s Vow I don’t care if you ignore me, hold your newspaper like a shield, puff your smoke around the edges, the only sound the tinkling of ice cubes in your glass. I...
Who Knew?
When he wanted to date her exclusively and she told another man who’d asked her on a date that they were now dating exclusively, and afterward he spent a night with a former girlfriend, she should have known. When they went to the wedding of the couple who’d fixed...
Accessible by Boat (And Even Ours Should Make it)
It was after the path palmed itself away into a terrace of moss-laden brick. After the breeze started in the early morning as if to say see? there is mercy yet. It was after Orion's nightly roundhouse kick from bay to gulf. Nightjar swiveled to mockingbird. It was...
Three Visitors in Search of a Visitation
After they were summoned they met around a firepit, as was Custom, four figures in boots, overcoats and scarfs, robed and wrapped in layers of fabric, though the fire was roaring and they had of course no fear of cold or need for warmth. It was unclear yet who had...
Past Due
She was already a liar. You little shit, like hell you paid for that watch. We were at Woolworth’s together and I didn’t see you buy anything, not a damned thing. She was already beautiful, but would only realize this when it was no longer true. She was already off on...
Seedy Motels
Seedy Motels Detective Sergeant Archibald Flett’s eye traced the line of roofing nails across the floor. It was impossible to see from the bed what the nails were intended to fix or if it was working. These places, seedy motels, were like Forrest Gump’s Ma. No two...
Occupants Sway Gently in the Breeze.
Cut the watermelon. State empathetically the sand-tide is low to yourself. Put the trash by the door. Bring the trash down the stairs. Wiggle the trash through the antique fair. Drip drop. Swords. Albums. Bottles. Vacuums. Irons. Crates. Polished cutlery. A house with...
A story about sadness and death could start with
The month my husband’s father died we hoped and held our breath and wished that he’d recover, and when we heard he had tested positive with Covid after the first hospital admission, I knew the end of the story and felt complicit at least in the editing of it. He was...
Organ-Grinding
Backlogged tacos fester inside a body ill-equipped to digest them. Rotting burgers demand too much from some orifice or soft shell of skin to find a way to the quickest exit. Instead, they stack and seep within you for decades. Heart, spleen, intestines, liver,...