Fiction

for Marie She was in her thirties, a poet, and she was afraid to fly. Her brother was dying in another city. She did not have a husband or children, but she had a job that held her in the city where she lived. Until her brother went home to die, her job was work…

After days of drifting, the man arrives at a confluence of doors. Had he been adrift on a river, instead of the ocean, it would seem as if he has encountered a logjam from some long removed past when the virgin forests were being dismantled. Had he been drift on city streets, he might have…

Poa compressa, Canadian bluegrass, grows well in both damp and dry climates, blooms the entire season, won't brown even with a late frost, and is a real royal blue; in the right sunlight it looks painted. The first crop on my brother Nelson's grave has come in thickly, almost plush, and kneeling on it, sliding…

It was just me and my brother Paul at the coops when Hondo come home with his new truck, ready to kill. He'd been down at Rose's, drinking hard, and as he lurched across the lawn I stepped out in front of him like a fool. You see, me and Paul, we're looking out for…

Lewis Houser and his thirteen-year-old son, Nathan, were hiding behind a toolshed in the tragic state of Missouri. They had been like that for over an hour-waiting-ready to salvage their lives and take what was theirs. "Ground rule number one," Lewis had told Nathan earlier, "is no talking, not even a single word, because the…

I saw my first ghost when I was nine years old, only I didn’t know it was a ghost at the time. This was on the Great Plains, in South Dakota, I think, on our way to the Black Hills. I was with my mother, my three-year-old sister, Lillie, and my new stepfather, Forrest Bender,…

Your television flickers. You're alone, your wife on a week-long visit to friends, so you watch the late news. Tonight is entirely about the Berlin Wall: the Germanies reunite, laughing and weeping Germans chip away at the Wall itself. One has a carpenter's hammer, another a sledge, another a crowbar. The sight pleases you; the…

It was one hundred and seven that June day. The swamp cooler on the roof had lowered the temperature down to the high nineties, and the walls and furniture were damp to the touch. I felt clammy and restless but there was nowhere to go except to the shopping center. My husband had flown to…

The first time Sam ever left her children behind to go away by herself, they were two and five. It was a long time ago. She went to a hot springs resort, where she met a very hairy man. Because the man had been there before, and Sam had not, he offered to take her…