Stories

When I walked in, the kids applauded. They were like, “The poet’s back!”

Such longings: Errant. Verdant. To have a good time. And dream.

Unnatural as a ghost; the thought rose unbidden to his mind.

Instead, she stares right at us, her shoulder half-naked in broad daylight.

She couldn’t have carried knowledge their kind would soon be extinct. The sediment came when it did, sealing them in their varied positions.

What a good time we could have if we were happy to be who we are.

An author’s choice of a book within a book is never arbitrary…

What right does an American mutt like me have to depict in fiction the lives of a Salvadoran family?

This skinny blonde steps on the stage in a skimpy Balinese costume.

Ulrike was not in the water the day the fishermen brought the ray.

From that day on, Sivaprakasam got embroiled in an ungodly mess.

Brain an inkblot liquor stain until the heroine blinks the coma away.

Just give me a small joy, say, the size of a ketchup packet.

The toes you step on today may be attached to the ass you kiss tomorrow.

I’ve never heard of Badgley Mischka (A person? Two people? Man?)

You almost never know different so you make a language of it: chitter, glissando, trill.

Like superstitious sports fans, we played the song night after night. Since giving birth I’d become hyperaware of death.

His spirit shone fiercely, shaming the chasm by illuminating it.

My days pass through me as music through a thin, stretched wire.

Her girlish hand the color of rich vanilla floating over the flotsam.

Her anger was white and cold. It sent seams of ice through my heart.

Kay Whitaker

My new car cost more than my dad’s first house; I Googled it.

She was here. She could not go on. It was the end—the end of the world.

Her knees seemed about to give way, and he quickly grabbed her elbow.

Hard to know what a prisoner believes, what the guard presumes.

Another disposable medical mask drying in the June sun after all the ceremonies are done Looks for a second like a lip snarling in that flirting way you see the tattooed girls snarl

The air, forced through her throat’s reed, broke with a play of notes.

They rise in waves, while a lone hawk remains unperturbed.

There was a ladder planted dead center in a field of high, thin grass.