Fiction

Humility

from Seven Mediterraneans The dreamer had heard what she thought was a rumor about someone she didn’t know wanting to have sex with her. This after several months of trying to have sex with Janine, who was in the painting group-they all took turns posing for gesture drawings-right before the weather changed to rain along…

The Banshee

The host is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-Bare; Caoilte tossing his burning hair, And Niamh calling Away, come away: -“The Hosting of the Sidhe,” W. B. Yeats My mother spoke with the dead. After the doctors declared her cancer-free, she could feel and hear their ghosts, see them as clear as…

Winter Chores

On freezing winter nights, the boys had two chores before going to sleep. They had to tie the blankets down to the bed frames so that they would not toss their covers off in their dreams and get frostbite on their hands and feet. And they had to empty their chamber pot so that what…

Hummingbirds

He wasn’t her first lover, or her best lover, or even her lover at first. He was too gangly, for one thing. There was nothing but leg connecting his chin to his shoes, so it was awkward for her always to be craning up to look at him. Except when he sat down; then, because…

Eruption

1. Savior The pustules on his back: volcanic almost in how they erupted, subsided, erupted. Closing my eyes, I would trace my fingertips along his skin, feeling the circular, hard shapes and slick, raised peaks. I wondered if they hurt when I touched him, how it felt to be so broken out, not only on…

The Good Friday Procession

According to city ordinance, the Buena Gente cantina should have been closed an hour ago. But the proprietress, a charitable soul whose life imitated the generosity of the earth, who believed in the rights of the people, and who didn’t mind defying a silly law in the name of good business, stayed open late because…

Pinhead, Moonhead

Last week my head was too small. This week, it is too big. My face in the mirror is a picture of dismay. If I try to correct the disproportion with baggy clothes, I will look not only moonheaded but squat, Charlie Brown-esque. When the head is too small, I fare no better: tight clothes…

The Corn Bin

The shelled corn bin was like a huge box over the alleyway of the corncrib. Millions of crisp and yellow corn kernels, ten feet deep, and ten feet square at the top. The boys liked to dive into it, letting it sting their hands and faces as they squirmed until they almost disappeared into the…