Among the well-bred and refined ladies of San Francisco, the prevailing opinion was that there could be no better sport than the breach of contract suit filed by Sarah Althea Sharon, née Hill, against Senator William Sharon. Let the men have their boxing-matches, the boys their football games — why, this was entertainment of the highest order, a clash in the greatest rivalry of all, that between the sexes.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I waited for the police to call or show up on our front porch, but they never did. I thought about calling Cecelia’s house, but I didn’t want them to connect me to her, which didn’t make any real sense because everyone knew we were best friends. I’d be one of the first people they’d come to. I watched the sunrise through my window and gave up trying to sleep.

The year men first set foot on the moon, the Copersmith family had not depended on field work alone to fill their stomachs and gas tanks for two summers running. The San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys, the furrowed plains of eastern Oregon, Washington’s orchards telescoping their columned bounty in every direction—all that had provided work enough for the four, and later the five, of them to subsist on was abandoned overnight.

I was sitting at my kitchen counter munching on leftover pizza when my phone pinged with a text. A dear friend was offering condolences on the death of another friend. My pizza dropped from my hand, and my breath caught in my chest. I had been away recently, distracted for a few weeks with travel plans, exhausted after returning home. Just the day before I thought about emailing my friend but didn’t get around to it. Now, she’s gone.

The letter arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, although it almost didn’t. It had snowed over the weekend, and Mel hadn’t shoveled the pathway or put out salt. When the doorbell rang, he was surprised to see the mailman.
“You gotta clear your path, Mr. Hanson. I almost killed myself. It isn’t right. Next time I’ll leave the mail at the bottom of the driveway and I don’t care if you report me.” 

“To William Ivey, Fort Kearney, Platte River Region, May 11, 1849. Sir: I have the sad duty to report that your wife Elizabeth Ivey died yesterday from the cholera. Given your absence, her church will be responsible for the remains and a Christian burial. Yours, Dr. Harold Cartwright, Physician, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.”
Rose stopped reading when she heard Lenny’s high voice. “Rosie? Where are you, wife?”

“Systems check,” Nathan shouted as the ship careened and shook violently. He had been awakened by the sudden shaking, something that he shouldn’t have felt in zero G unless something had gone horribly wrong.
“All systems are green and within acceptable parameters,” the cold artificial intelligence responded. The voice was that of his copilot, C.A.L.S. Nathan never had managed to memorize what the acronym stood for.

To celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the Symington Art Museum’s 1913 archeological dig, near the ancient oracle at Delphi in Greece, the museum asked Audrey August, a Classics scholar at Whitson College, to prepare a special exhibit.
Knowing her fellow professor, Rokko Isti’s deep interest in ancient history, Audrey asked him to help. Audrey would re-examine the notes, photographs and stored finds from the dig.

For the first time in fifty years of marriage, Arthur Bookman was keeping a secret from his wife. It was a new secret, acquired the day before they left for the cruise, and it chafed as uncomfortably as a pebble in his shoe.
Now, as their ship sliced through the waters off the west coast of Mexico, Arthur and his wife Faye stepped out onto the aft pool deck where rows of sun worshipers were broiling themselves in the tropical sun.

Roziana unfurls a violet yoga mat on the studio’s laminate floor. From wicker bins at the back of the room, she chooses a pair of mauve blocks, a purple strap to match, and a crimson blanket for what Paula calls her “sitz bones.” She sets up, facing the dazzle of the river beyond the ceiling-to-floor windows. That way, her view will change with each pose.

When the night sky exploded, the dark interiors of houses shone bright as day. And those that faced the street across from the park felt their homes tremble. Fierce chords of destruction echoed, and the neighborhood awoke with fright and stared at horror.
Caitlin sat up. Intermittent flashes lit the walls. Sounds: falling bricks, breaking glass, muted screams, explosions. She went to the window. Fires, as if dragons had entered her world, she thought, come to destroy her home.

The night before he left for the last time, he gave the dollhouse to her.
It was late. Abby had settled into her bedcovers and turned her head to the window. Outside, the sky was dark from the clouds that covered up the moon and stars. She knew she would wake to fresh snow on the yard—not the first snow of the season, but with the cold, it could be the first big snow.

I’m a trucker. My own boss is how it feels. Fending for myself. Have done it all my life. Sitting high up in my silver leather, long-haul cockpit of a seat, on top of the world. Surrounded by eighteen speakers, as many as I got wheels. Because I like things organized in a cosmic symmetry. Three thousand of my most-favored alt tracks in a bottomless, random shuffle, just loud enough for backdrop entertainment…

My father took me to boxing matches when I was a child. I was skinny, knobby kneed with a stern look on my face. We walked side by side on sidewalks with cracked uneven pavement until we reached a temporary ring set up at El Parque de la Soledad. A crowd of men would gather. Some greeted my father yelling, “Badilla!” or “Oscar!” They made wagers, slapped each other on the back and laughed from their stomachs.

Friday afternoon. Although the wind was whipping viciously up Baldwin Street, the sky was an agreeable shade of blue, the colour of infinity, and as I walked home from work, I sensed the subtle change of mood in the city. For forty-eight hours everyone could forget about their crummy jobs and dull, shitty lives. The quotidian nightmare was about to go on hold.

Robinette Alcorn slept poorly at fourteen; her body did not seem designed for comfortable repose. When she lay on her side, her bony hips grew sore. The back of her head grew numb when she lay supine. Phantom itches sprang up on the backs of her thighs, the soles of her feet. She sweated or froze. Come morning, she left for school puffy and sullen, red creases in her face, her hair awry. Weekends, she slept until noon, waking ferocious and unrested.

In the summer of 2010, my wife, Melissa, and I set off for Jacmel, Haiti, a port city of around 137,000 people that sits on the country’s Southern coast and about 40 kilometers from Port-au-Prince. It was seven months after an earthquake had made a desperate nation look apocalyptic and ravaged an already fragile infrastructure. Jacmel was damaged but serene in comparison to Port-au-Prince, where the streets were blocked by debris and traffic medians were filled with displaced residents sleeping in USAID tents.

It took everything in Justice Stephen Field’s power to restrain himself from laughing.
“In the City and County of San Francisco, State of California,” the document stated, “on the 25th day of August, A.D. 1880, I Sarah Althea Hill, of the City and County of San Francisco, State of California, age 27 years, do here in the presence of Almighty God, take Senator William Sharon, of the State of Nevada, to be my lawful and wedded husband, and do here acknowledge and declare myself to be the wife of Senator William Sharon of the State of Nevada.

The rush over, the news relayed, decisions pending, I peered over at the sack hanging on the side of the bed that held the blood leaking from my son’s kidney and felt helpless. I looked down at his body on the hospital bed, the size of a man now. As a teenager, he hadn’t really wanted me near him for a couple of years, but there lay his hand, so small to me now, though an adult size.

six silent, shaken years
as I traversed the borders
between genders

my father’s tuque
he gave me
one snowy day, leaving home

We tried to comb out the glued ponytail of the first Barbie
and dress Ken.
The basic Ken came with a bathing suit, but you could buy a sleeper set:
brown and beige striped pajamas.

(Before Meditating)
Doorway into adjoining room’s debris
boxes blankets pillows piled in childless crib
window fence smokeless chimney lifeless tree
its branches as bleak as a hopeless soul.

My bluest eye that is without the blue,
But the blue within to make up the two
Continues to reach its color by blue
Without any division from the two

It’s time, you say,
it’s yours to make the call of when to stop
to feel the years
attack your joints and swell your knees until
you don’t agree
it’s fair to be in so much pain to move around
from bed to chair