The flowers are what I remember most. They were everywhere. In pots, on wire stands, on chairs, the piano, the organ—everywhere. I specifically remember one arrangement that was so tacky [More…]
Genre: Fiction
Hedges
Three months ago, my son Jake dropped out of college for a job at a coffee shop. My wife and I found this out from Louise, a pathetic and frail [More…]
Body Noises With the Door Open
She was mad at him for smoking on their vacation. He said, “Come on, it’s a vacation,” and tipped his ash into one of his empties. On the way to [More…]
Loved, Stupid
My father caught my mother having an affair in their seventeenth year. He waited outside the boyfriend’s house and when he walked out my father tried to run him down with his ’92 Celica. All I did was mow down this chump’s rose garden.
She dismisses me with a flip of her dark, braided hair, tasty as black licorice. I can’t honestly say why I did it. On my way back from P.J.’s in Ardmore, a couple of frosty Rolling Rocks in my gut, surely an impulsive thing. A hit on the ol’ adrenaline bong.
David Bean’s War
Dear Dad,
I trust this finds you, Mother, Don, Gillian, and Ann as fit as you looked at the seaside last week. From the news this week, I fear it was the last of our family holidays together for some time. Lucky we got it in before Germany signed up with Russia. Now, we can only hope the German people can persuade Hitler not to go to war.
Storm Chasers
Cal and I got stuck on Route 9 surrounded by fields of corn, stalks barely three feet tall, New Jersey’s pluckable yellowed-ears still months away. Cal’s Plymouth, his radiator, steamed up, so he cell-phoned for help, but after forty minutes it was obvious nobody was coming to get us.