Fiction

I was born on the grounds of the Mount Mohonk Hospital for the Insane, where my father was Chief of Psychiatry, and because of this I grew accustomed to the sounds of misery before I went to sleep at night. I would lie in bed upstairs in my family’s house, which was situated one hundred…

One of the few friends I have left asks the question. As a poet, you would expect him not only to ask but to answer. “How do we know the agenda of love?” he asks and elaborates, “If you expose the heart, it can split wide open.” “So why do we love?” I ask him….

I had to ask someone how to find the criminal court building, so apparently I’d led a sheltered life. A woman directed me to Franklin Street and said I couldn’t miss it. I walked east toward the hulking gray walls which dead-end that part of the city. It was the cold Monday after New Year’s….

I meet my father in a restaurant. He knows why I have asked to meet him, but he swaggers in anyway. It’s a place near his office, and he hands out hellos all around as he makes his way over to my table. “My daughter,” he explains to the men who have begun to grin,…

Celestine Truxa was born in Salzburg on the eve of Metternich’s coronation as prince. According to the midwife, her mother split up the middle like a birch tree hit by lightning, managing to stay alive just long enough to see her daughter’s face lodged in the crook of her husband’s arm, eloquent of birth and…

He was walking down the highway, Ohio SR 4 between Union City and Butler, singing at the top of his voice. He carried a green plaid suit in a clear plastic garment bag. He did not bother to hitchhike, to actually turn every now and then and lift a thumb. By the city limits sign…

We were both sitting in old-fashioned green metal lawn chairs that rocked back gently on metal tube frames if you wanted them to, and I did. I rocked as I sipped the strong, lemony tea up through the straw, hoping Mrs. Eelpout would tell me a story. She was sniffling, still getting used to the…

for Margaret At the edge of a river and the end of a road, a blue-eyed boy lived with his mother and five sisters. The women sewed wedding gowns for every girl from every town. But not one of the river woman’s daughters made a dress for herself. They were too plain, too fat, too…

When I decided to ask Recita Holguin to marry me, I visited my confessor, The Bishop, in his place of banishment. He is not a bishop now, but he was once. “Red!” he said. “Red!” And he hugged me close, his cheek and ear pressed hard against my chest. He stepped back, and raised up…