Kimberly sat outside at the coffee shop when Caleb Bless ran past, waving from across the street. Like everyone else, she had gorged on the headlines: Newly divorced Caleb Bless on Bourbon Street, intoxicated, giving lap dances to passersby; Caleb Bless brawling with patrons at a bar, at a hotel, at a park—brawling, even, outside…
The girl showed up in early March, the rainy season, a baby tucked under her arm like a picnic basket. Hanna, just finished mucking out the pig stalls, was checking the seedlings in the greenhouse. In the watery, indecisive light that passed for spring these days, the little shoots looked depressed and anorexic. Outside, the…
The first c is sharp; a rock scraped against pavement. The second c is as smooth as a stone washed over by waves. They look identical. Interchangeable. But they are as different as the crescent moon and the snake, slowly strangling its prey. Two syllables. The first means, to be able. To be permitted. As in, I think I can…
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…
No products in the cart.