The first time Chloe kicked Brian out, they weren’t even married. And she didn’t really kick him out. Chloe was the one who left, though the house was in her name, though he was the one who transgressed. She thundered out of the house before she could do something she’d regret—like throw the pot of boiling sauce at him.

My best friend when we were growing up in Hamilton, New Zealand, was Stephen Walker. The only thing we had in common was that we were both born on D-Day, 1944, just a little ahead of the baby boom. I liked camping, fishing, swimming, cricket, and riding my bike. Stephen liked playing the piano, reading, and listening to Ray Conniff records. But we were mates and during school vacations I spent my time at his house.

“Let it go for a while,” said Fem when the alarm rang again from Mrs. Johanna (Hannie) Raven’s room.
I flicked my women’s magazine close that, a bit early in the season, displayed colorful spreads for Easter brunches that my parents would be quick to condemn, and got ready to get up.
Fem shot me a withering look. “She just wants to get turned over again onto her other leg, Steph.”
I began: “She’s in pain. She can’t sleep when she’s lying on her fractured leg.”

Three dollars in pennies. A handful of over-the-counter decongestant pills, expired. A piece of fabric printed with elephants from a pair of pajamas he had as a kid. A compact fluorescent light bulb. Folded liner notes from “A Love Supreme.” A rusted USB flash drive. Hair in a hair brush. A dried oleander flower. A flint of quartz.

Mary kept a box inside herself in which she kept all her unwanted memories.
It started when she was nine, on Christmas day. After running into the lounge room to see what presents Santa had brought her, she had slipped and hit her head, and so her parents had rushed her to the hospital.

When Peter Petersen entered the Marriott and saw no line at the check-in outside the convention hall, he knew he was late. There was a woman sitting at the table, staring at her phone. He approached her and said his name. She scrolled threw the document on the laptop. “I’m not seeing you.” He pulled out his I.D. “I’m with the Bureau of American Innovation.”
She smiled. “We were wondering where you were.”

I grabbed Alberto’s wrist and explained to him the difference between the DeDramafi and a watch: “The orange bar indicates that your body is acting abnormally.” I told him that the DeDramafi helps us deal with the drama queens.
He didn’t believe me, even though his arms looked as if they’d been stung by a jellyfish.

It wasn’t until she felt the snap, crackle, and pop in her knee that Melany Reyes knew this part of her life was over. Under normal circumstances she would never tap out but this was different.
Even though the outside world regarded her as an overnight success who had come out of nowhere, Melany knew it was a matter of fact. She knew all along she’d be an awesome MMA fighter and had proven her point.

The five children were waiting for their mother to come out of the Amerikanische Packetfuhrt ticketing office. They sat on a bench in birth order, the two girls first in white pinafores over high-collared navy-blue smocks; the three boys in navy and white sailor suits. Their luggage was stowed under the bench.
Sora had been left in charge of her younger siblings. She leaned forward, gripping the basket on her lap that held their provisions as if it were a life jacket and she, already at sea.

A fish taught me to swim.
He wore a woven crown of kelp upon his head—
he was, he told me, the king of the sea.
He found me standing on the sandy shore
and invited me to join him in the waves.
This really happened.

The silence of the dry lake bed is broken by the slow
countdown of a megaphone. Flashes of light ignite the
world white to uncomprehending eyes. As the shock
front cools into visibility, an enormous fireball grows
and grows before flaming out like the head of some
leviathan matchstick.

folks rarely stopped by our flat
high under the eaves
maybe a bill collector
or a nosey child welfare woman
out of breath
bringing with her bound files
and a jiggle of fat under her chin

My friend Feminism and I
enjoy long walks on the beach together
But there is a line in the sand that always approaches
where I must let go of her hand
because I don’t think my friend Feminism
understands how she can’t wear all her faces at once

Picture me,
as I am,
propped
on these ancient stones
to watch the gloaming
come lazily in.

birthday of a young man
showing him sights
events cold and crude
feelings heated and complex
mustafa’s
a youngster

All Tobias could do was thank HaShem over and over again that he had made it to the train station on time and that they were now on the train; the former because of what his wife would have said to him and the latter because now that they were on the train she wouldn’t be able to level criticisms of any kind at him in such close quarters.
He loved Hannah, she was a lovely woman, but the nagging sometimes, it was a bit much. And it didn’t seem to be waning in frequency or potency as the years went by

Last fall, in my first semester of college, I wrote a collection of poetry. It was a series of poems revolving around an ancient Korean fairytale about a woodcutter and his wife. The original story goes like this. When a poor woodcutter saves a fleeing deer from a hunter, the deer tells him a secret in return: there is a magical spring where seonnyeo (the traditional Korean equivalent for angels) come down to bathe. If you steal one of their winged robes, she will be unable to return to the heavens and therefore become your wife.

Arthur Millman wears the shadow of his mortality like a shroud, and I know that our time together will be brief but profitable. I give this commitment two months, tops.
Grey wisps of hair do nothing to conceal the marigold tinge of jaundice on Arthur’s scalp. Glee bubbles up in my heart. Pancreatic cancer is a hard-hearted mistress, and she has had her way with this thin, nervous man. While my latest client reviews the contract, I count backward.

I packed up the Tacoma, figuring on a five-day round trip down to Georgia. I researched planned stops, and figured that rural Georgia was more likely to have gravel back roads with higher hills and deeper valleys than the flat country blacktop roads that were fairly common in the northern Midwest, my stomping grounds.

It is the opposite of ironic to teach Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment inside the Travis County Correctional Complex. It is apropos, apt, appropriate. Perhaps too on the nose. TCCC houses pre-trial and county inmates in a 130-acre facility just east of the Austin-Bergstrom Airport. Pay attention during take off and landing next time you fly into town for SXSW or ACL, and you’ll be able to see the barbed wire.

I was thirty-one, a mother with a one-year-old son, and a marriage on the rocks. It would take two more years before we filed for divorce, but in the meantime, I was the sole breadwinner, my husband having taken a flyer on producing Broadway theater when the company he worked for downsized and I was six months pregnant. At some point, I told him he should get a job as a taxicab driver to contribute to the household, but he didn’t take too kindly to that suggestion. No surprise, but I was sufficiently exhausted and angry that I had no filter.

I remember the bottles. And the flacons. And the blister packs. All neatly lined up on the kitchen counter. I remember her taking a handful of her strongest tablets just before bed and, within minutes, her eyes droopy, mouth like rubber, voice distorted, like a slowed-down turnstile. It was during those few moments of seeing my mother changing from a normal person to a toy that had run out of batteries that I recognised something I wished I could forget.

It was in a mood of intense irritation that Senator Roscoe Conkling arrived in Chicago. Chet Arthur had been sent out in advance, his bulk trundled into a railway carriage like an overstuffed suitcase along with Thomas Platt, but Conkling had little expectation that Arthur would perform any more competently than he had in ’seventy-six…

Benny had forgotten about signing up for a job to deliver newspapers. It’d been two years, but that was evidently how long a kid had to wait to get a paper route. It was one of the few jobs reserved for kids. The routes didn’t pay much more than $15 a week, which was too low for grown-ups but high enough that every kid on Point Cadet wanted one.