Pretty Knotte
This evening I had a conversation with the editor—I will call her Jan—of a small but reasonably prestigious literary journal on the West Coast. At the time of this writing, I’m just a few months past my fiftieth birthday. A little Googling leads me to believe that Jan is in …
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Shelf Space
By the time I got down there, there were so many empty shelves in the Cape Coral house it looked like some beachy gift shop in foreclosure. My parents always planned to do Florida for retirement: a golf course, drives to the beach, Dine-N-Dance nights. Dad was fifty-five when he …
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Key Change
Buddy drives and I ride shotgun. We ride in a ramshackle van with busted fenders and peeling paint, the kind of vehicle that inspires parents to hold their kids tight when it staggers too close on the street. We are driving up the coast and the ocean is wide and …
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If We Clean, We Clean Each Other
You did an admirable job trying to hide your surprise when you opened the door and saw me standing there; most people blinked and glared or smiled too widely, looking like they’d lost their minds and were thinking of all the ways they’d like to murder me. But despite your …
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Enclosure
The howl spilled into the library. Through the window, it swept the stacks like fog, spreading along the floor before lifting to the ceiling. Two younger men looked at each other. They laughed nervously. An older woman with no chin sat at one of the computers and slowly typed how …
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Goodbye, Annie
It was too hot to be out, but no one complained because our good friend Annie was dead and we didn’t know how to talk about it. We sipped tall cans of sweet tea and ate unshelled peanuts, tossing their crepey husks in a vacant clay pot that once held …
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We Might Forget, But the Fields Remember
Summer is two weeks deep and already itchy with boredom when I suggest we poke around the abandoned house in the field. The bromegrass is half the height of the car and bends in supplication, tips wispy like cobwebs when it brushes our arms. We wade carefully, afraid of broken …
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Beneath the Skin
We were sitting by a stream that runs through a gulley beside my father’s apartment, when he began picking at his thumb. I let it go on for a bit, distracted and listening for my son playing off in the trees, but soon my father was gnawing at it, making …
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Mahjong Tiles
When I arrived at my father’s apartment for dinner, something was wrong. Through his living room window, I could see Guangzhou’s Canton Tower across the street; the light show was beginning—the usual run-through of the colors of the rainbow. Inside, the ceiling fan whirred, and the smell of old newspapers …
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Youth
I ran away with a girl one summer. We stole money from our parents and stuffed our things into a large backpack. Jacqueline had two pairs of jeans, a thin leather jacket, bras, her pairs of red espadrilles, assorted oversized sweaters, and toiletries. I put some shirts, pants, and underwear …
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