I got it but my sister did not. Did something konk out from a fever I got? I’ve never known for sure, just that one day when I was eight and my grandparents and cousins were all over to our house for my uncle’s famous Taco Nights I got really really thirsty, I even thought… Continue Reading
The detective with the Mario Brothers’ mustache stared blankly at me and that manly caterpillar on his face rose and fell as he moved gum in his mouth from side to side. It was mesmerizing and made me stare at his mouth when he spoke like I was watching one of those dubbed Kurosawa films.… Continue Reading
Netflix suggests Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. I start the first episode while I boil water for pasta for dinner again. This is the third night in a row that I’ve fed them pasta. After dinner, my children cloister in their shared bedroom and whisper about my weakening mental state. I keep watching Marie. She says to begin with clothing.… Continue Reading
The center’s walls read like a church basement’s. Every time he walked its halls, he was brought back to stacking plastic chairs and sweeping up coffeecake crumbs while he waited for his parents to finishing mingling in the stale perfume of belief. There is power in you, beyond you. When surrendering is the surest sign… Continue Reading
She doesn’t know what it’s like when those trains go by at night. The railroad tracks behind my trailer, carrying freight eastbound to St. Louis, or west to Los Angeles. Better places far away from here. She doesn’t understand how loud it gets when that train passes and that whistle blows and I can’t hardly… Continue Reading
Randy Briggs, better known to pro-wrestling fans as Mountain Man Briggs, stared at the body that lay on the cracked bank of the Trinity River. It was the biggest fish Randy had ever seen, its long frame covered in huge scales that reminded Randy of shark teeth. Even in death, it looked intimidating. Its mouth… Continue Reading
It doesn’t rain yet, but dampness hangs in the air, thick and heavy. A gust of wind plays with an empty Doritos bag, pushes it across the sidewalk, and slaps it on a stack of bricks supporting the rusty axle of a yellow Crown Vic parked next to the bus stop. I control my steps… Continue Reading
In a lot of ways, it’s what I dreamed about as a kid in Brooklyn who wanted anything other than cracks in the sidewalk and bus rides and trash in the streets and my decaying neighborhood. I’ve made a lot of great friends down here Oxford. The other side of it is I’ll never quite feel like I belong. I have this ache for New York, which will always be my home, and I miss it and I love it and I hate it.… Continue Reading
Eating alone at the wobbly table in the breakroom, I count each one of the ways in which I hate Jerry and forgive him for every single one. His perfect hair, forgiven; his sculpted chest, forgiven; his loud electronic music that overflows from his headphones, forgiven; his right-wing political stance, forgiven; his awful opinion on most things, forgiven; his inappropriate humor, forgiven; his deviancy on the internet, his gym obsession, his self-obsessed arrogance, his narcissism, his pseudo-intellectual podcasts, his cheating on his wife with my ex-wife, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven, forgiven.… Continue Reading
It was ten degrees and dark outside as Liam and Nicole drove down Highway 34 in Liam’s truck. The air and ground, snow-thick and dimensionless, disappeared the road and filled the couple with a sense of having travelled too far into somewhere unknown, outside the boundaries of what was allowed by physical law. December 23rd—and… Continue Reading