Last year, the police came twice to the house with the pool. Now they are fighting again. He yells, “Fuck, the miniskirt. Fuck the fucking miniskirt.” They’ve moved back into the dark parts of house so as not to be heard. Her voice is sharp. His deep. She might have screamed. Maybe not. They are quiet now. In the autumn, the police had him … Read More the house with the pool
I never open the north-facing window because then sound and smell from the exhaust fan overtakes my room. From mid-afternoon on they are down there working on the menu, the specials, and the fan mouths cooking smells in and pushes them back out. Mouths in and pushes out. Beneath the other window, a slice of the parking lot offers heels on asphalt and drunken … Read More at night
The light was pulsating. The grass gleaming now that it was spring. It gleamed. The wind and the light gleamed. “Gleam on, grass,” she said. “Gleam on,” he son repeated. They drove on toward the store, her son looking out the window. “Who is I, Mummy?” he asked. “You are you and I am me. I is also the one who is singing the … Read More I Scream
His skull was small, narrow, but he did good work with his hands, digging up the earth, planting trees, teaching people how to conserve. We would forgive him his trespasses. We would remember that he had helped us plant our first garden. That he chopped our wood when we were cold. We would remember that he knew how to find his way out of … Read More trespasses
The snow chips away. Slashes of wet and ice everywhere. No brown. No dried grass. There was a path of food coloring where she and the child pretended to leave bread crumbs. “Be quiet,” she whispered to him, “Don’t let the abominable snowman find you.” He’d been frightened then, wanted to go in. Not surprising. A sensitive child, he cried out each morning at … Read More crumbs
+ vellum
Her produce drawer was a mess of moldy tangelos. She bought the fruit on a hopeful day in early December just before the holidays sucked the life out of her, dumping her into the end of February with moldering drawer of uneaten citrus. It had been a winter of records–snowfalls, cold temperatures, wind speeds–leaving them trapped in the house when they otherwise might have … Read More winter wonderland
It was mid-July and the Hydrangeas had not yet bloomed. Her mother would have told her to be patient. “They might be late bloomers,” her mother would have said. What she wouldn’t have said, but thought, was, “like you.” She was a late bloomer. That’s how she thought of herself, though the truth was that she had never bloomed at all. Oh, there might … Read More they were fire
Oh, there was that family that visited from California. All that way. They brought their Breyer toy horses to the beach, those girls and their cousin. She tried to join in with her own horses but they were inferior, brandless. Later they teased her because she had grown breasts over the year since they’d seen her last, her bathing suit now too small, riding … Read More supervision
We followed a narrow drive lined by trees down to the house and the barn. The house was brick, covered over in plaster. The man with the fiddle and the man with the guitar stood in the entryway and played music. Can we get there? Can we get there? Yes. The cat rubbed up against the palms of our hands. We sat by the … Read More how did the pretzel cross the road?
The sun came out and everything looked brand new. The azaleas were blooming bright red and pink, salmon and purple. Their shades always just a little bit off. The heat settled in, moss on a rock. People weren’t used to it anymore. They wore sweaters to work in the morning and by noon were rolling up their sleeves and wiggling their toes in heavy … Read More rapture
There is a child on a bike and a man on a chair. And there is nothing. Children are taken from their rooms in the night. Babies snatched from behind unlocked doors. For a while there is a frenzy of wonder about where they might be and what happened to them. Then quiet. There was a girl who was a lifeguard at a pond. She … Read More rebar
He knew how to meditate. He could lose himself to his mind. The years of learning by prayer served him well in the bar. I could no more ask him why he had become a priest than he could tell me he had become a priest because. I couldn’t ask him anything. I made him a character. I wrote that he had been forced … Read More father
myfanwy collins 