Ghost Parachute

White is the color of mourning in some parts of the world. White is the colors of babies, of baptism, of lambs, of snow. White is the color of marriage and of hospital gowns. White is the color of the hallway as I approach my father’s room and the words of his doctors. White was […]

The first time we had sex was hours after I’d eaten the best steak ever. Since then, I’ve tried to find a steak to match it. ‘Where’s the steak?’ I shouted, head in the fridge. ‘Liz, you promised.’ ‘Had to throw it out,’ she said, walking into the kitchen behind me. ‘Throw it out?’ I […]

It was closing time at the shop. Reggie swept the floor in lazy half-moons, pantomiming actual work but gathering no dirt. A careful observer would note that he didn’t even carry a dustpan with him. Mr. Gellert counted the money in the till. He snapped each bill with satisfaction. It had been a good day. […]

I glance across the table and you squint back at me. Our eyes lock above your corn-on-the-cob captured between wee fork-handles. I’ve never known anyone who used them, and yet here we are at this picnic and you brought your own. In a velour-lined leather-bound case. Were we high school enemies so many years ago? […]

Mick is a rough-and-tumble sort of kid. He smokes a pack a day that he steals from the drugstore while his buddies knock over the magazine racks so the pretty girl behind the counter screams at them and chases them all out with a rolled magazine. He likes to tell stories from the train yard, […]

Twenty Years and Again A roach across the floor with light after its body, illuminating cornea-thin wings. There were roaches all those years before, but I was younger then, and my mother not nearly so sick.     The Guestroom This is your bedroom, baby. I love it, I love it, she said. She ran […]

The hole in the fence seems to pulsate in the dark of the back yard, but I don’t move from the deck chair. It’s almost midnight, and I’m sipping a coffee and listening to the radio, which always helps me relax. Now there is a balloon of fur protruding from the hole like a bubble […]

My sister is finally dying and I am fucking her boyfriend. My therapist says I’m compartmentalizing, but the truth is, he’s good in bed and I like it. When Celia was diagnosed with melanoma I cried more than she did. I didn’t go to school. I used an entire box of Kleenex in one night, […]

Reyna felt the clay beneath her palms, hard and cracked, hot. She heard the hawks overhead. She felt the sun baking her skin, peeling it back and exposing muscle and bone. She felt the land taking her, but she held on. She reached out and felt for the bush. Hands wrapped around it, Reyna remembered […]