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Fiction
My Stupid Harmony
The Wish Family was my family dressed in red-white-and-blue outfits, performing songs written by my father and played by my older brother Todd on our secondhand piano, my sister Mare on a convicted uncle’s guitar, and my little brother Jay on a snare drum so beaten its skin had been taped.
May 2001When I Get To Key West
In prison, despite the stereotypes, I am not raped by a gang of women with a toilet plunger; no muscled-up stud with tattooed tits claims me for her “wife”; no one corners me in the laundry room and beats the crap out of me.
April 2001Decomposing
It’s all in the way she comes out of her shop and says, “Come in here, my dear,” as soon as she sees you on the sidewalk in your nightgown, your dog beside you. It’s the way she says, “There, there,” though she has no idea what’s wrong. The way she clutches at her own breast when you try to tell her.
March 2001Joyful Noise
As a child, you followed the rules — that was your job. It was wrong to hit your little sister, to giggle or tickle or otherwise revel in pleasure, to take — or even want — the biggest piece. It was right to let your friends go first, to think of other people before yourself, to sit up straight and use the proper fork. It was downright dangerous to disagree.
February 2001Outlaws
The strangest remnant of William was a red party balloon that he had inflated and given to Gary as a joke on his fifteenth birthday, long after Gary had outgrown balloons. William’s sense of humor had been peculiar, but well-meaning. The balloon said, Happy Birthday. Gary stared through the stretched membrane at the invisible breath of his dead father.
February 2001The Year In Geese
I reached again, beyond the orange bill, behind the round eyes, and slid my hand lightly down his delicate downy neck. He stood absolutely still. I could almost feel a sigh in him, and I passed my hand again and again down this fragile stem of life, then out onto the fan of feathers across his back, the narrow spiny ridges and silken expanse.
January 2001My Life As A Mermaid
I get another letter from my sister Kay, who is in Honduras riding mules and skidding around the muddy mountain roads in a pickup truck. The roads have curves sharp enough to tempt death, she writes, sharp enough for you to see yourself leaving.
January 2001Help Me With This
It’s been almost two years since I shot and killed a ten-year-old boy. It was an overcast day in early December, and I was hunting from the deer stand I’d built where my property meets the woods.
December 2000Jonsared
He doesn’t seem crazy. Not at all. There’s no muttering, no matted hair, no tics, no eyes that are keyholes into rooms where the worst things happen.
December 2000Any Comments Or Questions?
Girlie slid out like a hot buttered noodle on that Indian-summer night in October — her father’s birthday, in fact.
November 2000
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