Published Stories
The Receiving Tower (upcoming in Willow Springs, 2010)
Walker, Wallace, Warren (upcoming in American Short Fiction, 2010)
Svara, Sveta, Sylvana (upcoming in Unsaid, 2010)
A Long Walk, With Only Chalk to Mark the Way (upcoming in Redivider, 2010)
Quella, Querida, Quintessa (upcoming in Guernica, 2010)
Edgar, Edric, Eduardo (upcoming in Gargoyle, 2010)
Yaretzi, Yasmina, Yatima (upcoming in Puerto del Sol, 2010)
Mantodea (upcoming in PANK #4, 2010)
Fawn, Fiona, Fjola (upcoming from ml press chapbooks, 2010)
Justina, Justine, Justise (upcoming in Wrong Tree Review, 2010)
Greyson, Griffin, Guillermo (published in Fanzine, 2010)
Perhaps only their mother could distinguish between them, could reckon their slight variations in weight, the distinct cervix-bends of their skulls. I never could, not when they were infants, and not when they were toddlers either, all dressed alike in the preference of my now good and gone wife.
Lakin, Lamia, Lakshmi (published in Knee-Jerk, 2010)
Remember the surgeons advising operations to remove the excess skin, to suck out the fat around her eyes, so that she might be able to see? From around her ears, so that she might be able to hear? How you hated the doctors for trying to decide in what ways our daughter could be beautiful, how she should see the world, and how the world should see her!
Abelard, Abraham, Absalom (published in Sleepingfish 8, 2010)
This smoldered cigar, last of a box of twenty. Bought to celebrate happier times. Smoked to keep away the smell. Of our unwashed skin, of our slipping flesh. Our baby grows in my wife’s belly, submerged sign of a prophecy burning atop her hot hard bulge: All hair, just like the others. Gone wrong again, gone wrong again.
Isaac, Isaiah, Ishmael (published in Sleepingfish 8, 2010)
Even at birth they were already damaged, their brittle bones contraction-crushed, powdered by the mother's powerful organs, her pressing canal: All those tiny ribs snapped and splintered upon the stainless of the operating room steel. All those skulls crooked and cracked, all those twisted greenstick limbs. We lifted each child out from the mother's body and into surgeries of its own, did our best to splint and screw our prides back together. So few survived, and for what next chance? On what legs would they stand, with no milk to grow them strong except from the body which had already failed to make them so?
Hali, Halle, Hamako (published in Artvoice v8n51, 2009)
The day came when we could no longer hide the glisten-sight of our daughter’s flippers, nor the secret of her skin, its oils and fur. Like all the other parents afflicted before us, we at last took her to the lonely end of the island, to the cliffs hung high above the breaking surf. There my wife kissed our daughter’s wet nose goodbye, after which I bound her tight in her bedclothes, stilled her wide limbs to her sleek middle.
And then how our baby tumbled from our hands, plummeting through the air and into the swallowing sea.
Dredge (published in Hayden's Ferry Review 45, 2009)
The drowned girl drips everywhere, soaking the cheap cloth of the Ford's back seat. Punter stares at her from the front of the car, first taking in her long blond hair, wrecked by the pond's amphibian sheen, then her lips, blue where the lipstick's been washed away, flaky red where it hasn't. He looks into her glassy green eyes, both pupils so dilated the irises are just slivered halos, the right eye further polluted with burst blood vessels. She wears a lace-frilled gold tank top, a pair of acid wash jeans with grass stains on the knees and the ankles. A silver bracelet around her wrist throws off sparkles in the window-filtered moonlight, the same sparkle he saw through the lake's dark mirror, that made him drop his fishing pole and wade out, then dive in after her. Her feet are bare except for a silver ring on her left pinkie toe, suggesting the absence of sandals, flip-flops. Suggesting something lost in a struggle. Suggesting many things to Punter, too many for him to process all at once.
His Last Great Gift (published in Conjunctions 53, 2009)
Spear has already been living in the cabin overlooking High Rock for two weeks when the Electricizers speak of the New Motor for the first time. Awakened by their voices, Spear feels his way down the hallway from the dark and still unfamiliar bedroom to his small office. He lights a lamp and sits down at the desk. Scanning the press of ghastly faces around him, he sees they're all here tonight: Jefferson and Rush and Franklin, plus his own namesake, John Murray. They wait impatiently for him to prepare his papers, to dip a pen in ink and shake it free of the excess. When he's ready, they begin speaking, stopping occasionally to listen to other spirits that Spear can't quite see, that he doesn't yet have the skills to hear. These hidden spirits are far more ancient, and Spear intuits that they guide the Electricizers in the same way that the Electricizers guide him.
What the Electricizers show Spear how to draw, they call it the New Motor, a machine unlike anything he's ever seen before. He concentrates on every word, every detail of their revealment: How this cog fits against that one, how this wire fits into this channel. In cramped, precise letters, he details which pieces should be copper, which zinc or wood or iron. The machine detailed in this first diagram is a mere miniature, no bigger than a pocket watch but twice as intricate.
The Cartographer's Girl (published in Gulf Coast 22.1, 2009)
The cartographer wanders the city streets, taking notes, studying the geography of streets and sewers, of subway lines and telephone wires. He learns, by accident, the exact distribution of telephone booths per capita, and where the invisible boundaries lie between neighborhoods. He crosses lines even the police dare not, walks in and out of danger without concern for himself. His bag holds nothing of value beyond the tools of his trade: his pens and papers, his sextant, his rulers and stencils, plus his dozens of compasses, some worth a month's rent and others bought in bulk at dollar stores and pawn shops. The compasses are disappointingly true, pointing north over and over, when all he wants is for one to dissent, to demur, to show him the new direction he cannot find on his own.
Even the compasses that break, that learn some new way, none of them ever point him to her. At least not yet.
Cain, Caleb, Cameron (published in Wigleaf, 2009)
The doctors promised twins but delivered only one baby from my wife's pummeled womb, her troubled cavity. First there was the push, push, then the blood, then my mistake-toothed firstborn howling in the nurse's arms: chubby, too chubby, too covered in mother's gore.
Beatrice, Bella, Blaise (upcoming in TripleQuick Fiction, 2009)
The older was the first to show us the scars, the furrowed archeology of her sisterly history, of their cutting, their stabbing, their sawing. The younger had better hid her sister's handiwork, bore it beneath shirt, beneath sleeve, beneath shorts and underwear. Just light bands of reddened flesh, of puckered scars. Even in the bath we barely noticed. Even when the younger began having trouble standing, we refused to believe. Always the younger had limped, we argued. Always she had struggled to balance. Always her ears had been notched, her fingers a crooked nine.
What trust we had in the older then! What light touch she had, what blinding perfect smile when questioned!
Domina, Doreen, Dorma (published in Everyday Genius, 2009)
What month then, what spring or fall, what meaningless season of locusts and black flies besetting our town, flown in on thickening air, on sickening smell? And then, in the middle of its days, this chrysalis, this cocoon, found wrapped between us, tangled in our morning sheets, in the space where our toddling daughter once slept, dream-thrashed, nightmare-ridden. Where she once clung to our skin, our heat. A chrysalis? I ask my wife. A cocoon? What's the difference when it's your child inside, when it's your caterpillar?
Brother, There is a Field (published in NOÖ Journal #10, 2009)
And in that field are rows and rows of tomatoes growing on radio wires, the wires twisted into vines and leaves and tiny buds, each plant leeching life from the dark dirt to suffuse the copper and lacquered cotton braids with something more, something rising above the materials of its construction. Moments after you enter the field you’re unable to see its edges, but do not believe that you have reached the middle, that you have gone as far as you need to go. You are surrounded by nothing but wire-stalked tomatoes as far as the eye can see, but still there is somewhere further, something up and over. Keep moving.
How I Started Going to Meetings (published in Necessary Fiction, June 2009)
How I started going to meetings is something I never told you, because it happened a few years ago to a person who is less me, less the person I am now, this person who until recently you had strong feelings for.
Those are your words: Strong feelings.
Now I have decided that I want to tell you, because I do not want to run into you again weeks or months or years from now, with her on your arm, and have this story still untold between us, because this is a story about what happened to us even though you're not in it.
While the Ambulance Comes (published in Keyhole Digest, June 2009)
There is a finite amount of time that passes between you speaking the words need and ambulance and hurry and the arrival of what they always summon, at least when spoken into a telephone in a certain tone of voice, at least when you can clearly explain the nature of your emergency then detail the location at which it is occurring. You do not understand this at first, saying only home, home, home, over and over, and it is already too late by the time you figure out how to form the numbers and street names that make up your address.
The Girls of Channel 2112 (published in Monkeybicycle #6, May 2009)
Channel 1411 is the one with the masturbating midget, the one who always looks both bored and horny at the same time. 1263, that’s where you can watch a whole houseful of frat boys sharing their conquests in grainy web cam glory. Here on 2112, it’s just my sister Lisa and me, offering total access to our apartment via your computer. There isn't any actual sex here, but it’s still a very popular channel, at least according to FunkyFurby, the webmaster at SexyFreaks and the fake name scrawled on the bottom of my paychecks. He says people—and by people he means guys, mostly—love the idea of fucking two girls at once but are always overwhelmed by the logistics. He says that our two heads and one vagina might just be the solution all these guys have been looking for.
I don't know about all that, but as long as they're looking I don't really care why. The important thing is that they look, and click, and pay, and sure enough they do all of those things.
An Index of How Our Family Was Killed (published in Conjunctions, March 2009)
A brother, a father, a mother, a sister.
A family, to begin with.
A family, whatever that is.
A list of evidence, compiled in alphabetical order rather than in order of importance, rather than in the order in which I gathered these clues.
A message, left on my answering machine and never deleted: My sister’s voice, telling me she’s okay, that she’s still there.
Absence of loved ones, never diminishing no matter how much time passes.
Accidents happen, but what happened to us was not an accident.
BeautyForever (published in Barrelhouse #7, February 2009)
It takes forty-eight hours to get notified of what trial I’m in, so I leave the clinic empty-handed and go to my job at Popular Pollution, where I’ve got a twelve hour shift ahead of me. I’m late, so once I’m inside the locker room I’ve only got a couple minutes to slip into my coverall and secure my gloves and helmet. By the time I make it out to the truck, Roy’s already behind the wheel with the engine running. My helmet is nearly soundproof, so I have to read Roy’s lips as he says, “It’s about time you got here, Tanner.”
I mouth that I’m sorry, even though I’m not, not really. He can’t do the job without me, and it’s not like I’m the only one who’s ever late. Certainly I’m not the one who comes in every Friday hung over and smelling like Wanda from Shipping and Receiving. My knowing about Wanda is the reason Roy will never fill out a Teammate Grievance Form against me. I’d just fill one out against him and he knows it.
Hold On To Your Vacuum (published in Keyhole #6, February 2009)
According to Teacher, there is only one rule, and it is this: No matter what happens, hold on to your vacuum. We have each been given one, each a different shape and size according to our needs. My vacuum is bright red and bulky, as heavy as a ten-year-old, its thick black cord worn down so that the wires show through in places. Holding it in my hand, the cord feels like the tail of a rodent, thick and rubbery and slightly repugnant. The cord reel is broken off, forcing me to loop the cord around my arms and the vacuum itself, making the whole contraption much harder to carry than seems necessary. I start to complain, but Teacher holds up a hand and silences me. He says, "This is the vacuum that was assigned to you, and the only one you’ll be allowed to play with."
How to Watch Paint Dry (published in CEllA's Round Trip #2, February 2009)
The Internet says that seven layers of paint will hide a bloodstain from UV detection, and so seven it is.
The Leftover (published in Meridian #22, January 2009)
What happened with Allison and Jeff was what was happening all the time, to other people Allison knew and, she presumed, to lots of people she didn't know. They had met, dated until it seemed like they should probably move in together, and then lived together until it seemed they should stop. In between, they talked about getting married, about buying a house, about having a family, but they didn't do any of those things.Now they were broken up, and there had been no fighting, no harsh words, just the knowledge that something had ended.
The Sweet Stuff (published in Keyhole #5, December 2008)
I see her from directly below, from my place on the street--A woman riding a glass elevator up the side of a building. It's a shame no one wears skirts anymore. The death of a fetish, sure, but still there are possibilities.
This Showroom Filled With Fabulous Prizes (published in Night Train, December 2008)
Like every other night, he orders a Diet Coke and sits at the end of the bar alone. It's not the kind of place he wants to keep going to but he doesn't know anywhere else, and anyway it's too early to go home to the small apartment over his dad's repair shop. The people in the bar aren't his friends—this isn't the bar he used to drink at—so he just sips his soda and listens to the jukebox and stares at the incomprehensible reruns of game shows playing on the television mounted above the shelves of liquor bottles.
How They Were Found and Who They Were That Found Them (published in Wigleaf, December 2008)
William Baker breaks a second-story window from atop a shaking ladder. William Baker peers into the darkness and then signals to the other officers that he's going in. William Baker uses his nightstick to clear all the glass out of his way. William Baker climbs through the window into the room beyond. William Baker gags, but does not vomit. William Baker turns his flashlight from left to right, then back again, like a lighthouse in a sea of trash. William Baker thinks, Not a sea but a mountain rising from a sea, a new, unintended landscape.
Her Ennead (published in Storyglossia, December 2008)
Her baby is a joke. It's too small to be taken seriously, just a tiny bundle of cells dividing. For another week or two, it will still be smaller than the benign tumor she had removed from her breast two years ago, a realization that leads to touching the place where that lump once was whenever she's alone. She jokes about this to her friends, who don't find it funny. She doesn't really either, but she can't stop herself from sharing. About her tumor-sized baby, which just keeps growing and growing and growing, taking over her body. This time, no one wants her to stop it or get rid it. This time, people say congratulations and hug her instead of pretending she's contagious, instead of forgetting her number until they hear she's better. Just like before, she's only angry because everyone assumes they already know exactly how she feels about the things that happen to her. She is careful to keep her true feelings to herself, to see that just like with the tumor, there is much that she could lose.
The Founder of this Town (published in Twelve Stories, November 2008)
I sat eating my lunch on a bench beneath a statue of the town founder, an old dead guy who no one I knew knew the name of. My lunch was delicious—tuna fish sandwich and salt and vinegar potato chips—and even though it was the same thing I ate every day, it was still just as good as it had been the first time. Also, the sun was out and shining and bright without being too hot, which was good because the side of the statue I was sitting on didn't really offer any shade. What I'm saying—what I'm trying to say—is that I was quite happy, even though I only had a thirty-minute lunch break and then I had to go back to my job, which I hated, and even though I had seen on the television that there had been a new flood in Texas, or maybe an earthquake in Belize.
Non-Medical Descriptions of an Object Floating in Glass (published in Lamination Colony, October 2008)
Boy as brother, obviously.
Ken Sent Me: Lost in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (published in Hobart #9, September 2008, nominated for the Pushcart Prize)
I am not Leisure Suit Larry, except for when I am. For instance, when I was eleven, I was Leisure Suit Larry for several weeks while he taught me about sex and I helped him get laid for the first time in his life. Now I am twenty-seven and although I am joining him once again I can’t help cringing at his many mistakes, his misguided attempts at pickup-lines and lovemaking. There is no way to change his destiny, and so the best I can do is get him there efficiently, with a maximum number of points and a minimum loss of life.
Ten Scenes From a Movie Called Mercy (published in No Colony 001, August 2008)
It begins with a man walking towards you from the far end of a long hallway, from the end of a courtyard between two symmetrical buildings, from the doorway of a country home and down a packed dirt driveway. You are stationary and he is moving, and although the distances between you are great they are not infinite. Two objects in motion moving down the length of a line cannot remain separated forever. Sooner or later, they must crash into each other and afterwards whatever happens next will happen.
Creating a Radio (published in elimae, June 2008)
Dismantling the vocal cords takes a decade, reforming them another one. When you're done, you've got a hard mass of flesh that was once capable of oscillating 440 times per second crystallized into a different kind of oscillator. The vagus nerve becomes a switch, controlling this new thing hanging in your throat. Other parts are necessary. Try stomach as transformer, capillaries as radio wire. Rearrange bundles of nerves, places axons in specific places. Turn wild dendrites into ninety degree angles, solid copper conduits. Your body was wired for life but life wasn't what you were given, so wire yourself for this new kind of existence instead. Everything is made of something else so change yourself into what you need to be.
The Folk Singer Dreams of Time Machines (published in Smokelong Quarterly #21, June 2008, nominated for the Pushcart Prize)
When he writes music he most often does it like this: By playing live, alone, bereft of his band. He sings words left over from the night before, from things that are dreams and things that only seem like they are. Sometimes he sees the ideas floating near his head, captured in tinctures of light, little blobs of meaning drifting through the air. In public he tries to ignore them, waiting until he's alone in his room to pluck them from their orbits and swallow them whole. He thinks that he's going crazy. He plays every show like it's the last one he'll ever play, and he always tells himself that maybe this time it is.
Like a Giant Beacon (published in Juked, March 2008)
The Ferris wheel is on fire, and has been for a while by the time the commotion wakes us and leads us back out onto the midway. No one can tell us how it happened, only that it is happening. Everyone is confused about things and we are no different. We can’t even remember what town we’re in, or what day it is. The monotony of carnival life is a boredom broken only now by the singular event of the Ferris wheel burning.
Stealing Susan (published in Bruiser Review, January 2008 and in Oleander Review, October 2008)
At first, Susan baited each purse with a twenty dollar bill, only realizing after the first half dozen that no one ever looked inside before they stole one. Now she fills them with objects that would otherwise be impossible to get stolen on their own. She leaves purses stuffed with letters in hotel lobbies and in restaurants and fills others with vacation photos before dropping them in bus stations and train terminals. People steal purses coming and going, before meeting friends and after leaving family behind. Finally, there’s only one left, the purse that was once her favorite. Will bought it for her when he knew it was ending but she did not. He got the guilt, she got a three hundred dollar purse. Something for everyone.
Custard's Last Stand (published in Dogzplot Flash Fiction, February 2008)
"Yankee Doodle" started to play, but still the little bastards waited, hiding in bushes, behind sheds, around the corners of houses. They were already sweating, anticipation the only exercise they'd gotten in preparation for this moment.
Alex Trebek Never Eats Fried Chicken (published in Storyglossia 23, September 2007, finalist for the 2007 Storyglossia Fiction Prize, Million Writers Award 2008 Winner, Notable Story in Dzanc Books' Best of the Web 2008, reprinted February 2008 in the Italian literary magazine Buràn as Alex Trebek non mangia mai pollo fritto (translation by Stefania Rega))
Maureen is working at Kentucky Fried Chicken, where she is an assistant manager. I'll meet her tomorrow, on my first day working there. Her boyfriend Brad is at rehearsal, playing bass in a Christian death metal band, which is so totally ludicrous that I will never quite learn to let it go. There are three girls somewhere nearby as well, girls that I am dating or have dated or should not be dating anymore but still am. None of their names are used here so it doesn't matter what I say about them. Alex Trebek is also in this story. He's hosting "Jeopardy" on the television in my house, and in Maureen's house. Probably in your house too. It doesn't matter. Like I said, he's in this story, but really he plays a very tiny part. None of us will ever even meet him.
A Certain Number of Bedrooms, a Certain Number of Baths (published in Caketrain 04, 2007, and You Must Be This Tall to Ride, June 2009, nominated for the Pushcart Prize)
The boy carries the blueprint catalogs everywhere he goes, mostly keeping them in his backpack and occasionally looking inside to spy on their colorful covers. He feels comforted knowing they are nearby. After school, he locks himself in the empty house and sits at the kitchen table, where he fans the catalogs out in front of him as he eats his snack. He compares the artist’s renditions on the left page with the floor plans on the right, then moves to the living room floor where he turns the thin catalog pages and ignores his cartoons. During Transformers or G.I. Joe, he turns the volume all the way down so he can hear himself enunciating the names of the homes he hopes his father will build.
Mario's Three Lives (published in Bound Off, December 2006, and in Barrelhouse #4, 2007)
The plumber has three lives left or else he is already dead. Maybe he leaps across the gorge with ease, flying high through the air to land safely on the other side. The jump is simple because he’s able to check the edge several times, waiting until he is sure of his footing, or else it’s impossible because on this world there’s an invisible hand pushing him forward, speeding him along, forcing him to leap before he’s ready. If that happens then the plumber is going to die.
Anything (published in Greatest Uncommon Denominator, 2007)
Sitting on the toilet, I gently kick her once, twice, three times in the ribs. She doesn’t move. I don’t know what I’ll do if she wakes up, but if she stays unconscious, well, then I’ve got an idea.
Player Piano (published in Juked, 2006)
My wife and I were blessed all right. We had everything. Really, we did. Good jobs and a great home, a loving family, plus all the creature comforts and material possessions a person could want. My wife, she still looked as pretty as the day I met her, and even at my age I was healthy with a full head of hair. On top of all her other fine qualities, my wife was a virtuoso musician. One day, she regretfully reported that our vintage piano needed tuning. In fact, she claimed it had always been the slightest bit out of tune and now she was finally tired of just living with it.
Excerpt From Volume H-Hn: Hair Boxes (published in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, August 2006)
Hair boxes were not discovered until late in the twentieth century, when they were developed as a response to the saturation of beauty-based advertising and/or the disappearance of understandable social rituals. The boxes themselves are most often created from scratch, the maker sensing that store-bought containers are inappropriate to his task. This is not to suggest, of course, that the maker realizes what he is going to do with the box nor why he must build one. Despite this uncertainty, the maker still manages to assemble a receptacle roughly the size of a shoe box, most commonly out of wood but sometimes from metal or plastic. It is not until the box is finished that the maker decides to remove his own hair.
The Present (published online in juked, 2006, then reprinted in juked print #4, nominated for the Pushcart Prize)
The morning of our anniversary, Emily handed me a present wrapped in purple and gold. I tore the wrapping away to reveal a gift box filled with thin, crinkly tissue paper. Inside was Emily’s left hand, cut off cleanly at the wrist.
The Diner (published in The Quiet Feather, 2006)
The diner was supposed to be brand new, but after a single look at its dirty counter top and cracked floor tiles I could see that it’d been there forever.
The Raincheck (published in Storyglossia #15, August 2006, Million Writer's Award Notable Story of 2006, reprinted April 2008 as Il Raincheck in the Italian literary magazine Il paradiso degli orchi (translation by Stefania Rega))
It is no longer clear to me which came first, the woman or the Raincheck Lounge. Often I believe that they came into my life at the same time, appearing in such close proximity here in the city, which back then was still a stranger to me. There was a man too, but he came later, too late for me to understand who he was. Not who he really was. I don’t mean that. No one could know that. What I mean is, who he was in relation to me, and to the woman, and to the Raincheck.
An End to Efficient Vehicles (published in Rumble, August 2006)
In the sky, invisible microwaves crisscross like jet trails, undetectable to us but disorienting to migrating birds, rearranging the Vs of geese into characters from new, unknowable alphabets.
CHAINSAW (n.) (published in elimae, 2006)
Used primarily for the removal of foliage, branches, and dead limbs (see also AMPUTATION).
The Plastic Surgeon's Wife (published in Thieves Jargon, July 2006)
The plastic surgeon’s wife strips briskly, revealing herself for the one-armed man, not taking time to seduce him with slow movements or soft words. The woman doesn’t have to try, not with her perky breasts and her tucked stomach, her sculpted thighs and collagen lips.
Instructions For My Twenty-Third Year (published in Edifice Wrecked, June 2006)
Get dressed and know that you look good. Watch the clock. Feel impatient but wait anyway, so that you don’t show up too soon and blow the whole night by getting bored before anything good happens. Don’t act like an amateur. Be better than that.
How the Broken Lead the Blind Until They Both Become Something Else Entirely (published in Smokelong Quarterly #13, June 2006) -- Read the accompanying interview here.
The blind woman cannot help spoiling her seeing eye dog and so one day as they step out of her building and onto the sidewalk she realizes the dog has forgotten its training. She ruined her first set of eyes with night reading and a refusal to get glasses and now she has ruined her second with the indiscriminate dispensation of treats.
White Lines and Headlights (published in Barrelhouse #2, 2006, nominated for the Pushcart Prize)
Weeks later, we are parked outside a drugstore in Omaha, the hundredth such drugstore I’ve visited this summer. I’ve got the Big Book propped up on the steering wheel, reading by the streetlight filtering in the window. I’m shaking because I know what the girls are inside buying and also because I’m starving to death, having refused to eat anything the girls have prepared. They cook all of the team’s meals and therefore mine. Amy takes her meals in conference rooms, meeting with other coaches and tournament organizers. She won’t let me sneak away without the girls or the team because she’s afraid I’ll go get high, go get stoned. I won’t eat for the same reason.
Rest Stop (published in Hobart #5, 2005)
What I wanted to tell her was that I hadn’t left because of what I did to her, or what she did to me. This wasn’t about what we had or hadn’t done, not now that we were three thousand miles apart. Out here, everything was finally going to change. Reality got wax paper thin, and although I couldn’t see the other side, I often knew it was there.
Twenty Fingers (published in FRiGG, 2005)
Sorry bout that. So there I was, blooming late into the sexual arena, and it took me a while to get my bearings, to build up some confidence. Eventually though, I realized what a gift I had, and that I should be using these things in bed, with girls. I couldn’t see why not. After all, an extra set of phalanges came in handy enough in those lonely teenage years, let me tell you.
Ground Rules (published in FRiGG, 2005)
How this works is, I have to cum if I want to heal someone. Just like Christ spitting into the eyes of all those beggars, my miracle’s a wet one. The women I’m expected to heal, they’re the lepers and lame men of the 21st century, cast out of a society increasingly defined by its advertisements, by a corporate idea of what a woman is, that popular delusion I helped create every time I showed up to work.
Five Pop Quizzes (published in FRiGG, 2005)
Separate Checks (published in Me Three, 2005)
There are three men sitting with the blonde girl in the mall-bought jeans. It is two-thirty am, three o clock, four in the morning. It is one of those times.
How to Befriend a Chimera (published in The Beat, 2005)
The man looked down at the golden retriever puppy. The dog returned his gaze, wagging its tail and panting cheerfully as the man tried in vain to smile. He still hadn’t named the dog and wasn’t sure if he should, not if he wanted to feel okay about stealing its liver.
Joseph's Dilemma (published in Monkeybicycle, 2005)
Mary was born with a lead marble in her belly, distending her still umbilical navel. By the time she was fifteen, it was the size of a watermelon, curving her spine with its weight. She moved from town to town, followed by cries of witch and oracle and the constant threat of stoning, with only the carpenter Joseph to protect her.
Rosemary Blooming (published in Cellar Roots, 2005, nominated for the Pushcart Prize)
My dad is waking me up, shaking me from my usual spot on the couch. “Sarah,” he says, just my name over and over. In the kitchen, my mom is cooking a breakfast neither my dad nor I have time to eat. Twenty minutes away, Alex is sitting on his porch, a stinking Camel hanging from his lips. He’s lacing his boots, which are exactly like my dad’s, putting on his Carhart jacket that is also exactly just like my dad’s. He wishes he was my father but he’s just my boyfriend. My brother Toby is sleeping hard because he’s retarded and doesn’t go to school anymore. He’s drooling on his pillow just a little more than Angie, who is also sleeping in, drunk and snoring just enough to keep the boy next to her awake. I don’t know what Helen’s doing because I haven’t met her yet. I haven’t met Rosemary yet either, but I’m sure she is just as busy dying as she will be the first time I see her.
The Birthday Gift (published in The Detroiter, 2005)
Ignoring his other presents, the boy immediately begins working on the first page of the Book of Mazes. He knows that for the first time, he’s received a gift perfectly matching his peculiar skills.
Fireworks (published in Cellar Door, 2004)
The crowd was filled with good will, fueled by alcohol and the anticipation of the fireworks, which were to fired from a barge out in the middle of the river. There were signs all over town announcing fundraising efforts to save the fireworks. According to the locals, this happened every year. Eventually there would be no fireworks here and people would have to drive elsewhere to watch them. Someone later told me that many of the towns no longer had fireworks at all, but laser shows. The lasers could be reused every year, and anyway, the West was drying out. Fireworks were dangerous in the desert, and it seemed to everyone that the desert was spreading. I didn’t know anything about that, about the dryness. Everything about me was still so wet all the time.
Respect (published in Metal Scratches, 2004)
The first time you change your life it’s completely by accident. You’re wearing a dress because you lost a bet, nothing more. The dress doesn’t fit and your makeup was applied by a drunk and laughing friend. Later a fat bald man feeds you lines that make you feel brilliant and precognizant, and you know he is going to tell you that you’re beautiful even before he opens his mouth.
Something Less Than Beautiful (published in The Driftwood Review, 2004)
Jake says the only time his face looks really good, as in fantastic, wall poster good, is when a dozen flashbulbs are lighting it up, but only during a three-quarters shot from the right side. Even then, he has to have the perfect amount of stubble. According to Jake, that means you should shave approximately nine hours before you need to look perfect.
That’s Rule No. 12, if you’re counting.
El Camino Education (published in The Drexel Online Journal, 2004)
When the man stopped the El Camino, I assumed he was letting me out, there on the shoulder of the rain-drenched highway. It had happened that way before, and I knew I’d be stranded there for hours. I started to beg, but he hushed me with a wave of his hand. He got out of the car and walked around the back.
91.67:8.33 (published in Thieves Jargon, 2004)
The building is still dark, uninhabited. It is early and so he works alone, testing a new method for the first time. He inserts the materials one at a time into the terrible new machines. He wonders at their color coding. Purple for plastic, green for glass, blue for aluminum. Blue for aluminum. He does not like this disruption of even the simplest pattern. The machines are here to disrupt a pattern stretching back to the beginning, when he bought his first pair of non-slip shoes, donned his first red smock.
