Grandma always said the best apple pie starts with fruits with the sharpest bite. My house is filled with Christmas carols, bright and clear in digital remasters. We always made pie with old scratchy records, some long-forgotten Canadian band singing Auld Lang Syne. The oven is preheating, and I can hear her reminding me how …
You ever been surrounded by your family that loves you but you just want to hide? Hide in the bathroom, hide behind wine, hide anywhere but in the same room as them. Crying on the toilet while you try to squeeze out the last bit of pee before one of your kids comes knocking on …
My phone buzzes again. Today I am the keeper of bees. Smiling-safe from stings. Plus, the silly hat. Outside the marquee, sitting down is proving improbable. Heels too high, gown over-structured (at her fixed-smile insistence) to prevent a slouch. The steps to the lawn are a perfect gradient for the fanning of bridal trains, but …
[CW: Cancer.] I heard about the house at the end of the old highway from a guy named Tony Gambino. Tony and I had our chemotherapy appointments at the same time, and we kept each other company, provided moral support, that kind of thing. We shared a kinship, because, well, we were both doomed, going …
I’m hoping you’re having a good weekend. I touched a firearm for the first time in my life, an M16 A4 rifle. I was expecting the M4, like the ones you used during your Basic Training. Can you imagine most of these people have been shooting since they were kids? Only drug dealers have guns …
On Account of my Left Index Finger by Luis Jefté Lacourt Read More »
My dad learned how to eat ketchup by watching Robert De Niro in Goodfellas. The scene at Tommy’s mother’s house, when Billy Batts is bleeding out in the trunk, his character, Jimmy, rolls the Heinz bottle between his palms and it comes out smooth, because of physics or gravity or whatever. He loved Robert De …
He Walked Up To Me and He Asked Me If I Wanted to Dance by Joe Marczynski Read More »
If they were in Ghana, she’d recommend planting Indian corn. They’d be peasants, for, as Dad used to say, peasants are always near to the soil, always grounded. In pounding the boiled cassava, she turns the pestle, adds water to the mixture gradually till it becomes slurry and sticky. She forms a ball, hoping her brother …
Abel Tanner had a question. It was not a question he could ask his wife, as it had not occurred to him before her death. The question first entered his mind as he returned through the garden holding an empty rubbish bin, and saw the thin gilded hook of the moon above their roof. The …
A mass of screeches reverberated across the sky and thundered through the open window. Bloody gulls. I missed the gentle dawn chorus, made up of starlings and blackbirds, rousing me from sleep; shrieking coastal birds were my early wake-up call these days. Rolling my head on the pillow, I regarded the man next to …
It’s me. Please call back, we should talk. I’m walking a trail right now and the sky is pink with cold. Behind me the hills rise from the mist like the scaly back of a sleeping dragon. I couldn’t sleep and came here early to scream where no one would hear. I heard the news …
Because she’d said, be there, and the boys are new to this, they turn up early and stand on the corner, waiting. Expecting a late summer night, they are dressed in jeans, t-shirts, and near-identical Trimm Trab trainers. They weren’t to know that August would be turning itself inside- out, blowing and drizzling its way …
Your mom is the sun to your moon, all the more so the Christmas your parents give you a Celestron FirstScope with a 76 mm reflector optical tube. Mom explains how CHNOPS—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur—are the building blocks of stars and life. “Including humans, baby girl,” she says. You name your telescope …