Fiction |
“Dead Reckoning”
“Some days, seeing is nothing more than a stack of ifs, a totem, bird-beat, a craggy fray, a fleck of dust that catches the eye and for a split second makes everything crystal clear.”
Fiction |
“Siesta in the Cedar Tree”
“When Cecilia left at five that afternoon, walking alone through the woods, Elena ran to her mother’s room and said, ‘Cecilia has tuberculosis.’ Suddenly a fence sprang up around her …”
Fiction |
“How They Died”
“Those years of bitterness and rage began with a hairline fracture in her tailbone. Until then, she had been known as a cheerful person; afterwards … whenever someone asked her how she was doing she would furiously reply: ‘My ass hurts!’”
Fiction |
“we buried mom in the cocktail shaker”
“We certainly weren’t going to shell out for a casket. Don’t pay good money for that shit, she would have said. So, while Mom shook down to ash, I looked for urns between crying shifts.”
Fiction |
“Fingered”
“Katie’s pretty bossy for someone whose mom still braids her hair, and Lauren is trying to look cool, so we’re doing what Katie wants to do, which is … playing ‘Never Have I Ever’ …”
Fiction |
“What Things Will Do To Survive”
“None of the four other single male passengers complain that the journey was supposed to end in Fort Bragg eight miles up the road. I don’t want to be that guy because you know.”
Fiction |
“I Have All Your Children” and “The Warmth and I”
“I should have never walked through your town, but I heard your church bells, the calls of your men. It had been lonely at the shore. I wanted touch. I did not want children.”
Fiction |
“The New Priest”
“We had also never heard of a priest having a husband. It is a very new thing for our Church. We are still getting used to it, frankly. We need some time. But we didn’t get any time, because the Search Committee and the Vestry went and foisted this fellow on us.”
Fiction |
“Two Visions”
“We couldn’t know that by nightfall, they would be upon us with their rapid hearts and their gnashing teeth.”
Fiction |
from My Mother’s Tears
“… she delivered this sentence that, true or false, desolates, rots the soul: You must always, at every moment, distrust everyone around you … Even your father … And even your mother …”
Fiction |
from Études de silhouettes, micro-fictions by Pierre Senges
“… by the momentum of this detachment, I am able to remove the me who occupies these lines and is composing them, and who still ardently longs to exist on paper …”
Fiction |
“The Other Side of the Dock”
“Looking at the sea too long made me nauseated, thinking inevitably of biology classes, of the teacher’s amphibious hands, explaining the cycle of life and of all those fish reproducing themselves so close to me, in a lukewarm salty broth.”
Fiction |
“Grayscale”
“The Polaroid is about capturing a moment when something in the body snaps, dislocates, tries to find its way back. It’s about maintaining a standard.”
Fiction |
“John Anise”
“This is how he was in life, curt, convinced we could read his full thoughts from one gesture. And then, he comes.”
Fiction |
“My Life in Animals”
“When I woke with unspeakable fear in the middle of the night, Elizabeth came close and told me stories of the cats in the woods and how they were protecting me.”