According to my big brother Daryl, mothers used to wrap their stillborns in gauze and stick them in a hope chest, hoping their child’s heart would then start beating again. I suspected Daryl was full of shit though because he was always full of shit. Mom kept her hope...

She bears the news like a storm cloud bears the rain, heavy to the point of bursting but not quite because she can’t burst just yet, not thirty-six days before her son’s wedding in Los Angeles, USA, to which she’s bought the plane ticket two months ago and gotten an...

It wears a golden tutu, a spinning disco ball effect. I’m dizzy, off-balance. I’m trying to eat breakfast. It’s wearing old-fashioned roller skates and boogies to a Parliament Funkadelic song, doing splits in my kitchen. It doesn’t suffer our pressure of memory. It...

The first millennial president spaces out. She’s looking at a word document. But not really looking. Seems like too much to care about. And there are other people being paid to do it in case she doesn’t feel like it. So she’s not sure what she’s supposed to be doing....

We’re grilling chicken thighs and deep-frying pickles and donuts, watching the cartoonish red glare of the burning city and taking bets on how long before it all spreads here, all of it, the fire, the former inhabitants, the thugs who started it all. They aren’t even...

Instructions: Apply the appropriate usage to the blanks. Due Monday. sweep sweeping under the rug swept away sweeping sweep When your husband makes the following ___________ statement, “This is the first time I’ve ever been in love,” and then follows it up (because...

It was the summer the tornado ripped through town, peeling the roof off the Crossroads Diner and powdering the big front windows, hurling the deep fat-fryer through the windshield of a Ford Ranger in the parking lot, and spinning the silverware bin so fast it embedded...

Last day of the salmon season, as I unzipped the bellies of sockeyes that splashed headless onto the belt and Mandy pulled the blood-orange sacs of roe from the entrails of the females and released them into the stream of saltwater that would carry them to the egg...

The next improbable thing comes barreling at us as if it has nowhere else to go. How many turns of phrase would you like with that asparagus today, ma’am? I am no one’s grandmother, thank you very much. That junk in the back of the closet doesn’t work, as expected....

I pause what I’m watching to make cherries jubilee. It’s the new movie about the architect who falls for her married client. They’re doing that thing on screen, where a message bubble floats next to the character’s head. The architect starts, then deletes, then starts...

They tell us our story, they scatter it like rose petals in front of us when we walk: how God plucked out one of Adam’s ribs to make us, and that’s why, when we lay in bed with our future husbands and press our cheeks to their soft, mangled chests, we will feel safe...

I can distinguish each one by their walker sounds. My mother’s walker makes a steady clacking, a locomotive’s leisurely journey. And there I wait, say, in the kitchen, as if on a platform anticipating her arrival. I coax and cheer her on, hugging her when she finally...

Where’s your bedroom, is what Jane, once being inside of Papa’s house, asked of it. Like this. She placed a palm on my oily jeans. Don’t worry, she said next. I said Clara. I said Jane—Sisters, I said. You two are different. They looked at each other and licked, up...

Monday needs someone to tell her that she sounds like Lauren Bacall, so she walks over to the fire station and lays herself down on the top of a fire truck. I clean the truck and listen. She’s like a fever except what I have to wait for her to do is the opposite of...

They had a story in the paper last week about a guy up in Kossuth County, and he built a Beechcraft Bonanza in his barn.  A model, I mean.  Full-size.  Same one killed Buddy Holly, and it looked just perfect.  Like it could actually fly.  You wanted to climb on inside...

Another Friday, another night spent admiring thousand dollar quilts made by friends at the art gallery. I have absolutely no idea how they were made, unlike my big heavy book. They are truly shocking when thinking about quilt expectations. Take what you think about a...

In Tarrytown, I met a woman who told me a tiger killed her husband on their honeymoon.  She didn’t like to talk about it, she claimed, though she often brought it up in conversation.  When I asked why her moods were ever changing, she would gaze at me and...