“My Bus Worries Me,” “Voice of Yesterday Morning,” and “Strangers”
Epicurus the Greek philosopher
tells me not to fear death.
He goes, Why should you fear death?
If you are, then death is not.
Nagy Specialty Landscaping
Six-year-old Craig insisted on wearing his t-ball jersey, a too-large purple pullover that advertised Mim’s Pharmacy out front and sported the number 8 on its back.
“Mary Fleck,” “Something Out of Nothing,” and “In Rimini”
Once, in another time, I traveled with my parents
In the 1951 Ford sedan to a distant part of the city.
You could call it a city, but everyone then
Referred to it only as a town.
Whisper Song
Miss Donna’s laugh has the unconscious sincerity that makes your throat catch and your stomach sink, like she’s just confessed something deeply personal. I picture her as a robust lady with broad shoulders and strong workers’ arms.
Baker’s Wall
A hot string of up-moves through positions of increasing responsibility and compensation landed Charlene Posey a job interview in 2007 with Craig Baker. They sat in his office directly opposite each other in matching visitors’ chairs with seats too shallow for his six-four frame.
“Pursuit,” “The Endless,” and “The Unswept Sky”
The hawk’s shadow follows me.
Some smoker’s tar coats my lungs,
all the tiny quivering sacs.
A Few Notes on the Structure of a Short Story
This essay is not meant to be a work of literary criticism, but as a guide to beginning writers about structure in a short story and how they can approach it when they write.
Boey’s Love Song
Solitary star’s light cleaves predawn sky. Morning’s mourning starts. Eyes fill in striking silence. Departed thumping, crunching, sipping, crackling, pouncing, yelping, woofs and wags of canine elder years seem bound within that star.
Other Plans
In my room at my desk, I startle at the front door’s metallic cracking shut. It’s Monday and she’s left for work, the workaday routine of teaching high-school Biology. Without a goodbye, which she trills when happy, calls expectantly when fairly content, speaks normally when resigned to the daily grind.
Dismembered
Fiona, nude, sweaty and spent, tries to block out the voices in her gut and in her mind screaming, don’t go back to Tucker, because he’s gonna beat you black and blue.
Insight
I have never deified my older brother, Eddy, in the way younger siblings often worship their older counterparts. I didn’t have a desire to follow him around like a lost puppy, demanding to tag along on adolescent excursions. For one thing, he was four years my senior.
“Self-Sabotage,” “Freely Drifting,” and “Blissful Anguish”
Like a cross stitch
I tied down your limbs
thread by thread
preventing you from flying
“No Tree,” “Saint Valentine,” and “Dead Heisenberg”
“No tree grows all the way to heaven,”
a darling end to a bible story
or Lenten play beginning
you might say;
a betrayal of trust
Sense and Sensibility: Story of a Storyteller
See the little girl sneaking out of her room, across the green shag carpet, down the creaking stairs to the second floor of the tri-level house. Ducking past the large bay window where a meager display of plants are cradled in macrame hangers…
Life and Death on Cemetery Hill
Alone, but not alone. Perched atop an exposed, wind-blown ridge in the Sonoran Desert a few miles north of the Mexican border in Arizona, the graveyard resembles a sepia tone image from the 1930s—slate gray sky, brown land.
A Sunny Day
In the yard on a Tandoor clay oven, Mrs. Hassan cooked dumplings. She stared absentmindedly into the pot at the small lumps of dough that stared back at her like bulging eyes from behind a veil of rising steam.
Tom’s Diner
Kit Bardot packed her SUV and headed out of the windy city of Chicago. She needed this break—this mini-vacation. She had planned her own way along the infamous Route 66. How far would she go? It didn’t matter. She had told her boss she was taking a much-needed leave of absence.
Blueprint
The house creaked, and with a mighty groan, heaved itself out of a funk, and stood up to meet the sun simmering directly overhead. Cicadas in the yard welcomed it back with a rousing chorus, the first of countless refrains to be heard throughout the sultry day.
Three Photographs
UNDER THE PIER, MALIBU CA
SUNSET OVER THE PACIFIC
and POOL, POST RANCH INN, BIG SUR
“Easy to Forget,” “Sometimes,” and “the other road”
It’s really easy to forget
To put it all out of your mind
That you might be living with a debt which could be called in
Any time by that unforgiving debt collector
In Defense of John’s Intellect
I ran into his great-aunt at the gas station. We squealed with delight when we saw each other and embraced with the kind of bear-hug squeeze that left us both a little breathless.
Phase Transitions
Leaning over the kitchen counter, Allison watches the sun rise over the eastern plains of Iowa and lets her mind wander: The beginning of another week. End of summer. Beginning of fall.
Henry Mercer (Also Wrote Fiction)
Doylestown, Pennsylvania, is Shangri-La to Bucks County residents—the county seat of art, culture, and government; epicenter of county history; and home to a wide array of restaurants.
¡Viva Cristo Rey!
The two brothers did not sleep that cold September night, for they knew in the morning they would both face the firing squad. One would be executed for having assassinated President-elect Alvaro Obregón, the other simply for being a priest.
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