Scrambleface

Fiction
  They’re holding the needles poised at the tips of their noses. Cross-eyed with nervous concentration, focusing on the point, the sharp end, the sliver of metal all set to…

Fata Morgana

Fiction
  When Sam’s parents had taken him to see the last remaining polar bear, they’d sweated in line for hours. Lizzie had been there, too. In the parking lot their…

If Men Had Wings

Memoir
  If men had wings, we would hear nothing but their beating. Some would learn how to tune out the takeoffs, while others would start their day by donning a…

Velvet Knob

Fiction
  The hog farmer is grindstone apples, seek-no-furthers, he is primrose balm, mayhaw and sorrel and scuppernong butters, he is carved corn-knife handles and stocking stretchers and tiny mounted soldiers:…

Tree Fail

Memoir
  i. Moss creeps up the massive white oak, gentling its craggy bark. This centenarian protects our farmhouse from summer’s glare. A black snake once lived beneath its gnarliest root,…

Patience

Fiction
  At high tide the water spewed against the toothy outcrops and matted scrubs of the low cliff around the inlet, and not for the first time the General was…

Must-See Spots in Boston, MA

Memoir
  Lush, 144 Newbury St., Boston, MA When I heard the bombs go off, I was standing in this shop with a tiny box of their “solid toothpaste” in my…

Salt River Canyon

Memoir
  When we drive through Salt River Canyon on US 60, the highway connecting the Tucson desert to the pine-forested mountains of our childhoods, I ask my husband to pull…

Guilty Parties

Fiction
  Every Monday morning before school, we assembled in class lines in the covered playground, from shortest to tallest. On the first day of second grade, we were the four…