Category: Fiction

‘There are times/ When a black frost is upon/ One’s whole being, and the heart/ In its bone belfry hangs and is dumb.” – R. S. Thomas, The Belfry Forty years an outside lineman with Bell Telephone in the Kingston area, he told...

I was in the wrong road-there ahead was the Wayan Bough Methodist Church. Distracted, I made a wrong turn somewhere. Or, maybe it was all the wine I drank last night that still haunted my head and body. And, of course, last...

“Shhh!” Cassy glowered with narrowed eyes. “…stick the needle,” Dwayne continued unabated. “Dwayne,” Cassy demanded with a low growl. “…in the doll and,” “DWAYNE,” Cassy repeated, pressing her hand against Dwayne’s shoulder;...

At ten steps – fifteen maybe – Father Ivan turned back but the barrack was already gone. Snow blasted east and west and north and south and up and down and back and forth, erasing everything beyond the rag on his face. Beyond...

An open mason jar separated mounds of leafy greens from the tubers on a long table at the market. In the jar, a five-dollar bill, folded longways to stand up, shared the space with loose change, like a diva sitting in steerage....

Don’t follow the tod. That’s what his Nannan had always told him. She had made him promise but, of course, the young never listen and he had moved to the city and was invincible. And he had thought there would be more of a...

Carl and Melissa had been on the road for more than an hour and still hadn’t gotten out of Los Angeles County. Their phones were telling them they still had another two hours to cover the forty-five miles left to get to Ventura,...

They hadn’t seen each other since that summer twenty-eight years ago. Marian was now music director and youth group leader in her church. Ann, a public defender, had never visited the out of the way southwestern town...

The snow had been coming down for hours with no sign of letting up. Outside Rose’s bedroom window, roofs looked sugar-coated. Coconut-colored mounds in car shapes dotted the street. Trees were dusted. All these sights recalled...

I. Heard But Not Seen The children noisily assert their existence around the corner of the school building down the street. Raucous laughter and screams erupt through the otherwise subdued suburban neighborhood. Everything is a...

Today they had both red and green grapes, corn, broccoli and huge zucchinis someone had donated from their garden. Luke displayed the produce with the plastic trays slightly tilted so the masked people in their cars could see...

Annette was excited. “Richard and Helen have invited us to go racing,” she said, smiling as she walked through the front door. “They’re such a nice couple. I can’t believe I got the job. He’s a brilliant man, and he knows...