A jailer holds me down while another presses a red-hot iron against my forehead. I writhe and scream before I black out. I wake with my own shriek ringing in my ears. The guards drag me out of the dungeon and hoist me onto a cart filled with other scholars. Our...

The elderly couple on the train to Portland have stopped speaking to each other. They’re both seated, pretending to read, one a newspaper, the other a paperback. They trade sighs. Pages crinkle. No one seems to be enjoying this. But no one is leaving, either, and...

Amuse Bouche You were conceived, quickly, against a dance hall wall to ‘You are always on my mind.’ Your mother didn’t come. Starter You emerged, slowly, on a rainy morning to cherry blossom branches scraping against the windows of the Rotunda. Your father didn’t...

First came the propeller, smashing through her awning. It squashed the zucchini, severed tomatoes from their vines. She freed the chunk of wood and aluminum from her freshly tilled soil, refashioned it into an enormous lazy Susan that spun across her lawn, its slowly...

The Husband He returns to the thatched-roofed huts and road-carved forests of his village. He was only sixteen when he departed, a bag of tattered shirts in tow. The whisperers said the city would consume him--only fools chase after happy endings. Now, glass...

The 15 Lists to Add to Your Apocalypse Bullet Journal 1. Possible sperm donors for repopulating the earth. 2. Locations of running water. You know for drinking, cooking, and maybe a bath if you are lucky. 3. Remember the times you swam in the ocean and how much you...

In a cynical display of toxic self-interest, Larry had formed a group called Save Our Parks. Its goal was to keep the city from selling a weed-choked lot for affordable housing. When I read about it in the paper, I jump up from my recliner and throw the paper down and...

I The first time I saw Annie Sanduski she stood in sharp relief against the rust lacework of an ancient Ford Ranger, waiting for the truck to disgorge the bevy of smoke soaked boys that composed her court. There was no sun to speak of; the mist drifted in a slow...

I lay on the bed. Theirs still. At least, Jackie’s. I got comfortable. Took out old Jumbo. Who would dare cut you, I said. She saw me and fled. The plane shuddered. My wife knocked, asked if I’d gotten lost. I came out and sat in my seat. We watched the same oil rig...

The birthing suite is expansive. Like a hotel lobby where they serve breakfast, but with all the tables and chairs taken out. The framed photos on the wall are the same, but in place of railroads and highway signs are flowers and points of light. They haven’t given me...

The inventory: Twelve packets of Silken Touch wet wipes. Ordered online for the Goa trip and delivered within twelve hours by a delivery boy who thoughtfully placed a call over intercom before ringing the doorbell of the Singh residence, then handed the parcel to Mrs...

I recognize the sequence, it’s from a show I used to watch in the middle of the night until I’d watched every episode at least three times. The animated gif soundlessly depicts a mostly toothless man, mouth wide open, crying like the dickens. The look in his eyes says...

Just think, he says, me, a part of history. And you do. You think about your husband as an inanimate man. You wonder if that’s how he feels about you, about your marriage. If this dream—that’s what you choose to call it—was inspired by something left unfulfilled by...

The first sloth appeared on Clarissa’s desk, right next to her keyboard. The statue’s dark brown eyes stared, its painted mouth smiled wide, and its three toes curled around a tiny sign that read “Follow your dreams!” “What the fuck,” she said. She picked it up with...

You played quietly, as instructed. Hunkered in the gap between your bed and the wall with a ballpoint pen swiped from the telephone table in the hallway. Tiny particles of chalky white paint clogged the tip, but you continued, undeterred.  Bubble hair for Mum,...