Fiction

  In Reno, coyotes toss half-dead rabbits in the air with their mouths while the pack yips and sings. Emily watches them and listens. The rabbits tumble and spin in the air like jumpers from a burning building who land … Read More

  When you hit a jogger with your 4-Runner and he gets up and runs away, turning to say, Hey, I’m OK! as he disappears into the night, it’s logical to assume he’s OK, right? You stay in your car, … Read More

  Nina made me go to the camp. I only brought it up to make fun of it, but then Nina was like, “No, you have to go.” Nina thinks I’m too hung up on Declan, that I should “get … Read More

  1. The man who wasn’t there to buy furniture appeared my first week on the job. This was odd, because the store I worked at sold furniture, and because he was conspicuously alone. Normally, I got families or young … Read More

  The inferno blew and blew. It rose above the trees and spread outward like villainous arms across the porches of the neighbors’ houses. The cries of an engulfed dog pitched high and then disappeared. Inside the Mitchell home, the … Read More

  We play games in the backseat, the children and me. Is it bigger than a breadbox? Smaller than a house? Everyone’s a good sport before lunchtime but, by afternoon, our minds are tired and the games become more brutal. … Read More

  Because I am not Dave’s wife, I hold my ear to his daughter’s chest every day, when the other children are quiet, sleeping. I think of her as his second heartbeat. I watch my friends’ children while they work. … Read More

  I.   There were no paved roads in Mbuzini until President Samora’s plane crashed into our mountain. Now I watch the taxis snake their way up to the monument twice a day. Sometimes I glimpse a white family in … Read More

  My mom must’ve told me Leslie was pregnant a couple of months after we broke up, but I didn’t know how pregnant. I tried not to think about it, to be honest. Someone told me once that if you … Read More

  By the time the hearse pulled up to where the dead corporal was to be buried, Private Crane felt as if the rubber soles of his jump boots had melted. The boots hadn’t been broken in yet and the … Read More

  The bookstore café was lit by lamps on tables, the big windows at the front beaded with condensation that acted like a blind, dimming the afternoon light. Sylvia had secured the corner table and, as she waited for her … Read More

  Spring   What passes for weather is cold and slick, the spit and runnel of raindrops. Padilla Bay reflects early sprigs of forsythia, yellow spikes bouncing on stems. A hardness in the clouds, an unwavering blank grayness that enters … Read More