The hawk’s shadow follows me.
Some smoker’s tar coats my lungs,
all the tiny quivering sacs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Like a cross stitch
I tied down your limbs
thread by thread
preventing you from flying

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…

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.

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.

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.

“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

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.

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.

Arlo and Ruth Kershaw remained good neighbors. They hired Jesse to do yard work, even though they could have gotten along without the help. He was mowing their back yard on a pleasant, September afternoon when Ruth received a call from Jesse’s Uncle Ray.

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

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.

UNDER THE PIER, MALIBU CA
SUNSET OVER THE PACIFIC
and POOL, POST RANCH INN, BIG SUR

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.

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.

Death appeared in the town of Markowa in March of 1942, and Aleksander and Julia both saw her at the same time. From a distance, she looked like a beautiful woman, a lovely Aryan maiden, but the closer she came to them the uglier and uglier she became.

My Spectacles watched me seek for them
lowered their head with mine.
A clear silhouette of every
Twist
Turn
Bend

No idea where it came from,
The pipe-threading lathe
Just presented itself
On the job when it was needed.
From the truck and tools,
We rested the Mule near the alley

As near-death experiences go,
it was one of the best.
What more is there to tell?