My parents must be trying to kill me. The car windows are closed, and Dad is smoking a pipe, the tobacco is cherry scented, and Mom puffs away on her L&Ms. The smoke makes me sick and I want to throw up. They won’t crack the windows because they’re afraid dirt will get in the […]

Rain fell all morning but I decided on a walk anyway. I don’t recall precisely what time I left my flat, it may have been close to noon, but I donned my yellow mackintosh, my Wellingtons, and fetched my peacock from his gated pen. An iridescent blue and green beauty, his train blazed with gold-rimmed […]

Asters Ethan and Sharlene sat on the twin Adirondack chairs on the porch, his fingertips resting on her wrist as they gazed at the violent New England Asters and purple black-eyed Susans, which spread out like a cornfield all the way to MacArthur’s apple orchard. Above the flowers, the setting sun painted the clouds peach. […]

Owen stood in the boxing ring in the back of Bichelmayer’s Meat Market, using the edge of a turnbuckle to press the swollen flesh away from his eye. Breath came ragged through his teeth and exhalation whistled through a crack in his nose. His hearing, gone, blasted by the cacophony of the crowd. […]

Oh no. Oh no.
How did she forget about this?
Yes, the Cape Cod Bryerson Family Reunion Weekend always sneaks up on you like a cardigan-wearing endangered leopard, but this time, when it’s really important, she forgets? […]

In the moments before he fell asleep with his foot on the gas, driving a tractor-trailer with no trailer, sometime in late July, 2001, and thirty-four miles from his exit on the I-98, Dea came to think about a time just after his infancy, when he’d visited his great aunt’s farm. […]