Delicate—the way at three she touched her hands tip to tip, each finger a rib framing the teepee of her hands. So tentative that joining, taking tender hold of her body, as if the ballast of her selfhood rested there. Already she could thread tiny beads through the eye and onto string, correctly placing each…
We were almost out of money, so Trace went to steal us another bottle of something. We were celebrating. The holiday weekend was almost over, and the mechanic was due back in town the next morning. We’d finally be able to get back on the road. I sat on the rear bumper of the van…
MASTHEAD Guest Editor Charles Baxter Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor David Daniel Assistant Editor Gregg Rosenblum Assistant Fiction Editor Maryanne O'Hara Associate Poetry Editor Susan Conley Founding Editor DeWitt Henry Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Editorial Assistants: Elizabeth Dresner, Colleen Hubbard, and Carolyn Rathjen. Fiction Readers: Nicole Hein, Kris Fikkan, Amy Shellenberger, Nicole Vollrath, Darla Bruno,…
for Kiernan when my daughter’s tugged home—diminishing yellow skull a balloon blown beyond the western pond—the raspberry tang of shampoo seeps into pillows and futon; her tuneless whistle needles the hall; the torn, lacy hem of her soul nestles among Victorian dolls strung in hammocks along one wall. Porcelain…
Stone calcifies around it creating an impenetrable shell. In spite of its heaviness it floats somewhere in her body though she is never quite sure where until she stops to think about it. Probing, probing, hoping this time, this time that when she feels it bang against a rib or whack her heart, this time…
Uncle Lake and Aunt Bobette lived just off the La Loma bridge that crossed the Arroyo Seco. Right after the bridge, you made your first left-their house was classic Pasadena, a craftsman house with a low-pitched roof, exposed rafters, dark wood shingles, and a sleeping porch vined with wisteria and grape, drab green and idle…
The old year’s over. So, too, the old century, the old millennium. Two thousand years of Western Civ! . . . Finished, achieved, collapsed. Silly, of course, but it’s how people think. Some people (oh, definitely a smaller set) are wondering whether the shiny new millennium which has just begun will have much literary fiction…
When I smashed the plastic Barney plate to smithereens, bashing it over and over against the slate rim of the sink as yellow shards flew all over the kitchen floor, the children were upstairs, and I was thankful they hadn’t seen me like that, or been scared. I could sweep up everything, through a smear…
Why delay? Today I stopped to rub the fur, like the tender ear of a cat, stopped to stroke the lush gray plush (and oh, the pink!) as if the cat had rasped itself to frenzy, to an ecstasy of itch all raw this steak tartar, this chafe of meat, and because of this I…
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