Ghost Parachute

You strip out of your blue leggings, gently stretch your flesh-tone nylons into place, and tuck your short wide penis into as comfortable a position as possible. Your nether regions are humid and sticky. Baby-powder is a foregone conclusion. You were out till dawn dancing with friends and arrived late to practice this afternoon. You’ve […]

PE changed the day a woman named Doctor interrupted our game of badminton. She said, Today, we’re going to learn how to inhabit the body. She looked at me, then over my shoulder. I need all the girls to follow me. We lined up in alphabetical order by our first names while the boys took […]

The idea was pretty much a joke. I said that Jo should pretend that she’d snapped, and thought she really was the Good Witch of the North. I was trying to lighten things up, seeing as how it was all basically over for us. Jo had just said she was stepping down as artistic director […]

The sandwiches are cut into tiny triangles as if for children, but there are no children left. Little sausages nestle together on bone china plates. Pastries too beautiful to crush lie untouched. Mothers’ cheekbones hover under hollowed eyes, as we look anywhere but at each other. Loss burns under my ribs. I smooth out a […]

Like every morning, Lizzie held her breath while she washed dishes. The second her husband’s truck disappeared down the road, a knot untied in her chest and she breathed easier. At the table, her boy, Daniel, shoved eggs, bacon, and toast into his mouth. Crumbs sprayed as he tried to talk. “Chew first, talk second.” […]

I’ve tethered myself to the water heater using a rope left dangling from the ceiling of my garage. The rope is frayed, peppered with limbs of insects that’ve otherwise escaped, and scratches against my hips since I haven’t put on a shirt. I bought this house at an auction. The rope was the only thing […]

The night of the Harvest Debate, in the year of the great famine, the Queen took the side of the peasants. She argued they should keep the castle share of grain so as to have something to sow in the spring and — by eating through the winter — strength to sow it. She won. In those […]

Large rotted teeth clamped her pale nipple.   My voice disrupts the shovel’s rhythm. Father’s thick fingers sift through clumps of soil. A woman’s delicate work, he casts off rocks, fool’s gold, splintered glass. His gnarled finger points to the hole cradling my mother. I fling dirt, shroud her sophic eyes.   She howled.   […]

It’s 5:10 p.m. on a Friday Florida afternoon. Husband pulls his Chevy truck under the carport of his small Florida home, next to Wife’s Passat. Wife’s car, he notices, has not moved since he left for work this morning. He knows this because Husband places a penny on the top of the right rear tire […]