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"Sometimes the Going"
Phoebe Spring 2023 Short Fiction, Contest Finalist It’s not often the case, but we’re all hungry for dinner about the same time that night. Me and Anka, my landlady. Her fat-cat Bazo. We collide in the tiny kitchen, circling each other. Anka pulls at the curtains, debates using the oven after such a hot sun. I open and close cabinets, trying to find an easy bite. Maybe cereal. Maybe ramen. Bazo thinks every package that crinkles holds something for him and he noses at my hands, beginning to purr… "Evergreen" Ms. Aligned 4: Coming of Age Spring 2023 Poem And when everything else lost it's color—ever-shelter, ever-shoulder, you caught the snow and held it.
"Small Hungers" Nelle Spring 2021 Lyric Essay Summer brought fruit. Riper, sweeter. Cheaper than any other season. And Ma bought all she could. Mangoes, rosy and plump. Berries in blue. Kiwis that she held in her hands, spooning the green flesh from its furry skin. Any piece with a thick rind, she showed how to smell at one end, a dab of sweetness there. Like perfume at a pulse...
"Little to do with Rain" Ruminate Magazine Fall 2020 Winner of the Willam Van Dyke Short Story Prize We moved through the night like it could hide us—even if there was a God. Especially if there was a God. We smelled of muck and moss, every inch of us thick with the rain. Jeans lay heavy at our hips, cold on our skin. My blouse held to my waist like a darling. Murphy started the old Ford and we crept along the puddled gravel, fog catching the head beams and scattering their light to a lousy halo... “Grow Heavy” Los Angeles Review Spring 2016 Winner of AROHO’s Orlando Prize for Short Fiction First rule, he makes sure to look in the lady’s eyes when he smiles. Second, he crinkles his like Clint Eastwood. Tonight, many nights, he practices his smile in the tri-fold mirror, locks the bathroom door so his four-year-old can’t get in. He thinks of that Eastwood who could swagger about with a rifle in hand, but could also touch a lady, tender, at the small of her back. Who could work rugged days, eyes creased by the sun, but also meet you with a word, warm and measured. Eastwood once said, manhood is really a quiet thing... “This Sonata, into the third movement” Bellingham Review Spring 2016 Winner of the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction Three moves in four years. I’ve lived in three houses since I left ours. At the first, the yard sloped up at an angle awful in February, and the front stoop bore ridiculous steps, narrow and steep, the cement laid decades ago. At the second, a small grassy slant preceded some stairs—winding wooden stairs. Their path veered to the right, looped around a tree, then wound to the door. Would you believe I held on to the piano? “Don’t Forget the Jazz” CARVE Magazine Summer 2015 Microfiction They’d have all we needed at the Stop-n-Go. That’s how Mom put it. All we could need. Down a block and around the corner. Past the pawnshop with its neon signs in green and red, always buzzing: Buy or Sell, Instant Cash, Rolex and Coins. Then the Laundromat with the door propped open, warm air and fake flower scents hitting us as we went by. The only real green snuck out from cracks in the concrete or dangled from squat trees planted along the road, their low branches cut off at the quick... |