On a balcony overlooking the parking lot of the El Capitan Resort Casino, Rodney and Tatiana shared a cigarette while a red glow crept...

Alex Frazier stared in from atop the mound as I settled into my crouch and rolled through the signs a second time. Behind Frazier, the...

Some houses on Harwood Avenue were louder than others. Some houses housed families with twelve to twenty raucous kids who were kicked out...

Shannon lifted her face toward the open sky, waiting impatiently for the passing of a shooting star. John spotted one after another,...

The embers of memory smolder but no longer flare. I hold her in stolen moments of dreams, my mind altered, untethered from the ravages of...

Add sugar to the pan, and just cover with water. Don’t add too much water, like you did in your first year of marriage. You had to stir...

Mid-August, my parents dragged me out to watch my sister, Jackie, lose the championship to Tackett’s Auto Supply. Even in early twilight...

One by one, the headshots popped to life on the Zoom conference which was supposed to have started promptly at 12:30 (it was 6 minutes...

I’ve looked up at this building many times, from a cardboard city. It might as well be a different planet, made for those whose lives...

The wood was so dry that it ignited almost as though it were paper. Paul stood up from the fireplace and grabbed the keys from the bowl....

The man and woman hiked a yellow trace, barely a road, through the countryside, bound for another town. He walked in front of her. She...

Basket with Raspberries (for Anatoly Marienhof) The raspberries are misplaced in a wooden basket, cradled thankfully in multiple paper...

### “Yes, life is life,” Charles said. “Except when it …” ### “Isn’t” ### Charles pauses here, to which Cassandra says: “Okay, so what...

The bumble bee did not know that winter had begun until he woke in the mouth of a tulip, her petals glossed over with ice. He bumbled...

It had been nearly a century since my last visit to the chateau. My light carriage, drawn by two dappled steeds, ascended the steep,...

These days she would accept all or any correspondence. His utterances are a dying dialect. The last thing he had told her was ‘I do not...

Friday afternoon became interesting following a hard knock at the backdoor. I rose up from the kitchen table, abandoning my hot coffee...

I Southern California smells of honeysuckle, pomelo, orange blossoms, lavender and the Pacific Ocean, always the ocean. All scents are...

My girlfriend, Jolene, took it and ran with it, but I figured I should let her know. Too bad an argument ensued and it ended abruptly....

We thought you’d remember us. Trisha dreamt her kid tumbled down the stairs and opened the flesh below his knees. She’d woken up,...