Stories

Zeus’s tongue thrusts straight and deep between my lips.

Cerberuses ran in packs, terrorizing drunks who fell in the snow.

At the copier, her back to him, running off copies, was Penny Ayler.

The man lifted his shirt just enough to show the handle of a pistol.

The boy had never before seen his father hopeless. He was afraid.

If Vann kisses her, a mist will rise in her brain. A promise of oblivion.

I had promised my children to end the war before they grew up.

He’s not the skinny hippie all the paintings make Him out to be.

The future was spread out for us to go in any direction we wanted.

“You know what they say about
free health care. It costs money.”

I was only five when Dad told me I had died. “You drowned,” he said.

Albert came to her rescue. “The Great Gatsby’s our religion,” he said.

Rain falls steadily, rattling down drainpipes and gurgling into gutters.

Ella knew she hadn’t hurt Sebastian, but she knew she’d betrayed him.

“Wanna give it a go?” my brother asks, nudging me with his 12-gauge.

The man said in a hard voice, “I wanna fuck you, little Indian girl.”

I miss sex. I really liked it, and I was good at it, if I do say so myself.

Amy put her arm around his shoulders. My boy. Isn’t he wonderful?

His eyes always astonish her. Iridescent blue, flecked with black. Her husband was gone, two years later than she should’ve thrown him out.

A small circle of friends and family babysat so she could go to school.

As I lit the samovar, she stepped through the door with that reserved gaze and whispering voice of hers. The Kabul of my childhood. The Kabul of affectionate gestures, of wise, soft-spoken street vendors. She ended the conversation in her usual discerning way, smoothing the blanket across my chest.

She always came back with her lipstick smeared all over her mouth.

We’re fat! So what? They hadn’t yet tired of this chant, the play’s refrain.

The Others came in the light of day and splayed Father open.

There was nothing sadder than the look of defeat in a man’s eyes.

Design a way to kill those rats, and do it now, Fiori, do it now.

When an adult falls, children are stunned and cry, “Mommy! Mommy!”

I hightailed it out of the hospital like my ex-wife was a prison I’d escaped.

The war was about to begin, and the four boys were
in charge.