The Wing
The morning Nadine’s feathers sprouted, a light snow fell. She was standing outside, watching Meg board the school bus, noticing how the little girl’s hair, frizzy like her own, glistened with snow, making Meg—or Meg’s hair—look surprised, an electrified Who, me? Like a shocked halo. Or a crown, afloat. …
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Cousins
I heard about Xu before I met him. Ma liked to tell the story when he collapsed in the street while carrying bananas from one side of the town to the other. The vendors made a gurney and rushed him to the hospital. On the way, he woke up …
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Foreman
There are four men in this crew. Dwayne and Jackson were around last summer. Scottie started a few weeks ago. Tom is the foreman. Tom has been calling Scottie, “Jimmy” since day one. After Jimmy Connors, the old tennis player. Scottie has narrow eyes, a brown bowl of hair …
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The Buzzing Means That Mom’s Back
May. Cicadas emerge from the earth, glistening and horny and pissed as all hell. Everyone loves to hate on cicadas, but Cenna’s dislike is more specific. Cicadas mean summer. She doesn’t trust summer. Sure enough, on the Friday before Memorial Day, her older sister calls. “Guess who’s …
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A Pound of Cure
I went to the street market with my grandmother every Sunday until I turned sixteen, when I didn’t understand her as anything other than grandma and mam, and her big voice felt like Moses splitting the sky to make room for the two of us. We’d see folks from …
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Coney Island Babies
The mothers hugged their boys close in the summer, afraid to let them wander in the sun of a world still alien to them. The fathers, out of habit, drew lines around the building, confining them to their narrow apartments. They closed windows and made it so the boys …
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Room for Owls
I drop two Tasty-Tarts into the toaster and look out my kitchen window. The sun makes a blue line over the hill. Dew is on the grass. I can still hear the song from my dream, and I’m happy. Minutes before, I was inside a cruise ship, wearing …
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Buddy and the Moon
A small bottle of dust sits on my grandfather’s desk, fractals of pale blue and silver catching the sunlight. It’s got a yellowing label on it: moondust. His desk is in the attic, facing the window to his backyard. I can see the old greenhouse from here, where he …
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Truck Stop
The A/C died with the automotive equivalent of a death rattle, a couple of clanky coughs and then breeze-free silence. I lowered the windows, and thick heat filled the cab at eighty miles an hour. I reached for the thermos I filled at Double D’s in Asheville after leaving …
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Cold Engine
Breath recedes on the windowpane. Almost March but the world shows no signs of letting up. Didn’t take the meat out of the freezer at the right time, so now we have to wait for it to thaw. One of these days I’m gonna drive this piece …
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