On Balance

On Balance

Tribute It takes ten thousand hours to shine at anything.And if we haven’t spent night after night on the Reeperbahn cranking our act so tight it stood up all by itself and walked,we’ve come close, but we still fall flat. We sweat inside our Sullivan suits. The early...
In A German Pension

In A German Pension

Frau Brechenmacher Attends A Wedding “Fancy Theresa bringing that child with her. It’s her own child, you know, my dear, and it’s going to live with them. That’s what I call a sin against the Church for a free-born child to attend its own...
Florida

Florida

Ghosts and EmptiesI have somehow become a woman who yells, and, because I do not want to be a woman who yells, whose little children walk around with frozen, watchful faces, I have taken to lacing on my running shoes after dinner and going out into the twilit streets...
4 3 2 1

4 3 2 1

His mother continued: From the look in your eyes, Archie, I gather you’ve forgotten about Amy, but back when you were three and four, you had quite a crush on her. Once, when we all went to the Schneidermans’ apartment for a late-afternoon Sunday dinner,...
A Walk On The Wild Side

A Walk On The Wild Side

‘Papers’ – the man held out his paper-taking hand without looking up. ‘Aint the newsboy,’ Dove explained. The man glanced up, then wished he hadn’t. Before him stood something in a pitch helmet off a Walgreen counter, share-croppers’ jeans, sunglasses, a dollar watch...