Fiction

Boys, men, girls, children, mothers, babies. You got to feed them. You always got to keep them fed. Winter summer. They always have to feel satisfied. Winter summer. But then you stop and ask: Where is the food going to come from? Because it’s never-ending, never-stopping. Where? Because your life is spent on feeding them…

I had a boyfriend my sophomore year of college who wanted to marry me. After we graduated, of course. We were both enrolled in small private schools in North Carolina, his for boys, mine for girls (we were not yet men and women). Unlike me, Bill already knew what he wanted to be: an orthopedic…

Back in the days when life was easy and you could walk down the street at night and not worry about anybody knocking you over the head with some blunt object and taking all of your pocket change, Miss Mamie Jamison, the neighborhood kids’ godmother who gave us money and candy and let us hide…

Jana and I were in the bathtub on a drizzly afternoon, miles from anywhere. She was turning the hot water on and off again with her foot. I leaned against her, comparing legs. It made me think I was seven again, at the Albany Art Museum, copping a feel of those rich velvet cordons when…

When light came enough that the sky was blue, Ivy and Track had been driving for an hour already, the three girls and Tad in the back and Bella-Jean smug between them in the front seat, holding a paper bag to throw up in if she had to. Buzzy, the baby, lolled on Ivy's lap…

On the bus from Nashville to Lonoke, Arkansas, Jim Yankee Fish sits in back, in the star suite, with Bones, the bass player, while the star is up front doing business. The young and old singers all call Fish "Yank" when they see him in bars or on the road. Yank, they whisper, and he…

Down the dusty road, and down the river, down below the Bull Cafe. The sun is up and Luster rises. A long hair divides the dog's water dish into the yin-yang. Luster leans to her toothbrush. The roots of her hair throb in her scalp, her heavy hair. She is naked, and sweating already. Uncle…

The gray is terminal this time of year.  The tourists cleared out months ago, leaving us islanders to find one another in the barren streets, exchange pleasantries, then wander home.  I drive into Vineyardhaven for my morning cup of jumpstart while the ferry's moan pushes through air that is damp lint.  Somnambulent, the winter months…

Next year, writing his personal experience essay to convince admissions at Penn he's Ivy League material despite uneven grades, he'll describe in amusing detail the one baseball game his father took him to, and get in on a scholarship despite his father's explicit pessimism. And he'll do well, though he's not as brilliant as his…