Fiction

Law of Return

Adler, Professor of Rabbinics (Emeritus), was annoyed that the young man sitting next to him was interfering with his sleep. Through slitted eyes he watched him, plugged into his music, listlessly turning the pages of a magazine, giving out somehow all the traits Adler had come to dislike in the young—vanity, narcissism, the insouciant attention…

from Archangel

The following excerpts are from Archangel , a hybrid work that takes as its center the unnamed “monster” in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In Shelley’s book (so very different from the movies) the “monster” learns to read by overhearing cottagers giving lessons to a foreigner. Subsequently he reads many books-including Paradise Lost, Volney’s Ruins of Empire,…

Quiet

The air outside was warm and wet, like breath. Feeling the breeze on his face, the baby stopped crying and looked up at the sky. I turned him around and leaned him against my chest, holding him with one hand curled under his arms, the other cupping his bottom. He gently kicked his legs, as…

Hi Howya Doin

   Good-looking husky guy six-foot-four in late twenties or early thirties, Caucasian male, as the initial police report will note, he’s solid-built as a fire hydrant, carries himself like an athlete, or an ex-athlete just perceptibly thickening at the waist, otherwise in terrific condition like a bronze figure in motion, sinewy arms pumping as he…

Dressing Up

"Just in time for cocktails!" our mother’s mother, Gran, says, obviously exasperated, coming to meet us out on the drive. We were supposed to be there for lunch. Now, dressed in her cocktail clothes—white pants, a silk smock, gold shoes, and jewelry—after perfunctory kisses hello (she’s irritated) and the quickest sizing up of our mother’s…

Reunion

When Anna Green walked into the ballroom for the twentieth reunion of Surfview High in Los Angeles, she did not predict that she would fall in love with Warren Vance. She joined her classmates, in their finery, penned by the hotel"s large glass windows, the sky outside black and the cars on the freeways arranged…

When the Stars Begin to Fall

  The men and women of the Causon Creek Church of God with Signs Following were expecting families from congregations all over the South to attend their annual homecoming services, some from hundreds of miles away. Most would cross the Tennessee border from North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky, though a few were coming from states…

Republican

A section of the newspaper, rolled into a tight cone and flaming at the top, stuck out of the cook’s ear the first time I saw him. This was early June, in Corpus Christi, Texas, when I was sixteen and had been hired as the delivery driver for La Cocina Mexican Restaurant. The cook was…