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?

Sand ground into my shoulder blades. Scratch scratch on aluminum. I opened my eyes to a sky white on white. I blinked. Blue clouds with yellow edges. Against the hull of the canoe, lake water rocked and licked.

We’re on our last legs, and the legs are last to go;
the best metaphors die young, reborn as cliches.

Arkansas Department of Correction: Grimes Unit, 2000
The inmates leaned on their shovel handles and gazed up the long, sloping fairway. The man in a clerical collar and black shirt stood on the tee box.
“Ostrich?” one inmate whispered.
“No. Lower body is too skinny. Stork?”
“I got it. Praying mantis.”

The days were long and yellow and the heat thick as syrup. Ron was itchy in his work clothes, plump now because Joan cooked so well. His heaviness and the strokes in his face had people he didn’t know calling him Mister or Sir. It was funny. Only a few years ago, he was slim and rigid.

Lindsey’s family was heading to San Francisco to celebrate her father’s journalistic achievement at an honorary luncheon, but she had other plans. She kept this to herself as they piled onto BART, her sister and parents whooping when they found three empty seats in a sea of Oakland Raiders jerseys.

Ever since the publication in 2000 of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point – about tipping points in the world of business – the term has been used increasingly in a variety of settings. Sociologists speak of tipping points when a community has so many minority members that white flight begins. Climate experts speak of tipping points when climate change becomes irreversible. Physicians write of tipping points in determining when a disease becomes an epidemic. What I haven’t found yet is a full-length book on the issue of tipping points in fiction, a discussion which is sorely lacking, for tipping points are an essential element in any work of fiction.

Nobody wears flip-flops in the middle of December, but when Luca called at two in the morning, they were the only shoes I could find. I stood shivering in the street outside his house in my pajamas with a fleece thrown on top, my toes turning red.

Erik received the news of Pappa’s death in the summer of 1979 while he was away teaching philosophy courses at a study abroad program in Paris.

Picking at the bones,
they feed from residual
ligaments left
post quiet carving

began with disinterest
proceeding to tsks tsks then
disregard

Like a title that keys no theme
Except an atmosphere, I slip into my clothes.
A doorknob, a checklist, a podcast
On an unsolved murder.

Shards of invention over
crisp dirt :: secreted
mouths whisper about
asexual
union and definitions :: small

The storm swept up a week’s worth of clouds and binned them far to the east into the sea. Tanya stood in the doorway, surveying her yard. Cool mountain air entered her lungs—though she lived far from any mountain—and the sky was clear and blue.

The images are part of a larger series created in the Mojave Desert around Joshua Tree in the fall of 2023 that explore the shifting state of the desert.

As a preliminary matter, let me state that I do not believe in “rules” for writing fiction and certainly not for writing works of magic realism. The following essay will provide guidelines and nothing more. I will be describing what I have learned by writing short stories using magic realism and hopefully give you some ideas as to how to do the same.

This series, Chasing Paradise, draws upon my work as a fine artist in painting, as I create stylized photographs of flowers and plants found in my rural environment.