Allison’s mother’s favorite piece of advice was “Be nice to people who aren’t obviously useful to you.” One doesn’t need religion to understand that, Allison thought, but she didn’t follow the advice. Her mother said the Torah was there in case of emergency. “In case of emergency, break glass.” It was funny to hear her…
The circus wouldn’t have liked anyone Sid married. He could date, yes, he fell in love sometimes, but not showily, nothing alarming, and not for long. While many of his employees were married and whole families formed and grew and shifted in his circus across the years, Sid himself had all their lives to stand…
It was an early September afternoon, the air stagnant with rare New England humidity, when the girl came to the island. She arrived with her father, the physician, from Boston. She was the first child ever allowed. An exception, The Council said, as they blew the conch shell like a horn, signaling the boat’s arrival….
The first thing Arnie did was to take out a pad of graph paper, apologize for reading to me from notes, and explain that he was doing so because he wanted to be sure to remember everything he’d planned to say. He even recited his apology from notes, saying he was aware we’d hardly seen each other…
In Sheboygan, toward the end of eighteen months spent stevedoring before disillusionment put him back on the boats, one of the men Tom worked alongside was crushed by a crate when a crane’s strapping gave way and the cargo had swung loose. Mose, the man’s name was, or what he was known by. “I’m Irish…
Suki gave in to the buzz buzz, like a horde of hornets, echoing through the flat. It shook her bed frame and made her brain rattle about in her skull. Daylight through shuttered blinds, noisy street below; bin day. Which day was bin day? Could be any. Suki never knew what day it was, only…
Our fiction winner is Max Steiner, for his piece “Grace Zeroes Out.” This year’s fiction judge was R.O. Kwon. Of Steiner’s story, she writes: “Grace Zeroes Out” has stayed with me like a haunting, the narrator’s voice hard to forget. The story is mostly structured as though in a series of triptychs, with each panel revealing…
It’s like how dogs get before an earthquake: pacing, whining, howling at the door. That’s me. Whole hours before the sky falls, I catch a sidelong view of the disaster, looming like rain clouds out of the north. I’ll be on the phone with my dad when it comes, the question I’m about to ask…
He was in love with someone else, but he couldn’t have her, and so he chose me. He lived with me for seven years and I had asked for nothing. Not even marriage. When you love a holy man, you know that God is in his heart, and you take what you are given. He…
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