New World Writing Quarterly

Six Pieces 

LYDIA

He pushed the flow­ers into the folds of my apron. Keep walk­ing, he said. Keep walk­ing. So I walked. Then he said, You will lose all your ros­es walk­ing like that, dear girl.

Skating at Mill Pond

 
Sometimes we don’t want to know, frequency
so low we can’t arrive.  Gratitude is
a stone in the pock­et to remind you
to smile, and also a rock that drags you
down into the black of the glacial pond
to –more

Maldiciones

 
When I opened my front door to let the detec­tive in, I saw them imme­di­ate­ly. They were hang­ing around her, some right there on the front step and oth­ers, a few feet off in the yard as if they weren’t sure they were wel­come. There were at least eight of them, some fad­ing in, some fad­ing out. My Tommy was not among them. And that man they’d found dead, that Dr. Fremont, he did not seem to be among them. I won­dered if the detec­tive knew she was sur­round­ed. Some peo­ple knew; some didn’t.

Fortune Cookie

 
Portions of her mem­o­ry slipped through a dark hole. She knew who I was, but just ran­dom facts about our his­to­ry togeth­er. She knew we were mar­ried, but she did not know for how long, or any­thing about Elvis in the white leather pants who sang Jail House Rock after­wards when we laughed till we cried.

People Inside of People

Hamburg

Martin didn’t want to leave home. But his wife had asked for divorce. He con­sid­ered the end of his mar­riage as proof that he had grown timid and dull. He need­ed to blow up his life, to impul­sive­ly live—to become the man he had been before he was married.

Priscilla

 
Both of their hearts were bro­ken, and they had the same scars slic­ing their chests in per­fect halves. They met in the car­diac ward. Lana had a bypass at thir­ty-two; Mitch had a trans­plant at fifty that almost didn’t take and then did. Later, lying togeth­er in bed, they pressed their chests togeth­er and mar­veled at the sym­me­try. He put his ear against her left breast and then leaned back in sur­prise. “What on earth is that?” he said, and she said, “It’s a bell, of course.”

Waterfront

 
Gorillahead hates his name, calls it an aber­ra­tion, but says the sit­u­a­tion is too far gone, a nick­name that sticks, giv­en by idiots. He walks, knuck­les to ground, the way I’ve seen goril­las walk in old pic­tures, holoflim­sy, and long, stut­ter­ing reels of Twentieth cen­tu­ry film. I tell him I think his name is fit­ting, min­i­mal­ist, that it’s a fine descriptor.

All the Baby’s Air

 
In our Family Life class we’d all shared a table and watched Ms. Felton from Planned Parenthood unroll a con­dom onto a wood­en dil­do. She talked about sin­gle par­ent­hood, how hard it was, how no one helps like they say they will. She was preg­nant with her sec­ond and con­stant­ly pat­ting her tum­my. The whole class want­ed to be her sitter.

Gargoyle

 
When it rained we
put pots on the burners
and made soup

Rumplestiltskin

 
Someone here to see you, an intern had said, rais­ing his eye­brows and lift­ing his arms to make a shark mouth, bit­ing.  Now that they’re “interns,” instead of appren­tices, they do what they want—like chil­dren, Giorgio thought, shrug­ging and mov­ing from the bench toward the door sud­den­ly filled with a shad­ow.  Il grande squa­lo bianco.

All of the stones all at the same time

 
The client scratched at paste clot­ted in his hair.

The client was in a car. The client’s car was in a car space between new­ly paint­ed gold­en lines.

A sign: Mini Bob’s Mart.

“We are quite lost,” said Deer Food.

You Who Never Arrived

 
And some­times, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your pres­ence and, startled,
gave back my too-sud­den image .…

–from “You Who Never Arrived,” Rainer Maria Rilke

I’m back in my home­town vis­it­ing friends for a wed­ding, and I stop at the super­mar­ket to pick up avo­ca­dos and limes, and I see–there across the pro­duce sec­tion rum­mag­ing among the let­tuces–myself. I’m buy­ing ice­berg lettuce–or rather, the oth­er me is buy­ing ice­berg. This me prefers more exot­ic vari­eties: Boston or Bibb.

Three Stories

 
TERRORISM

The first time she has the dream, it seems per­fect­ly plausible—substantial and fac­tu­al, with all its details consistent—but because she real­izes she is dream­ing she is not deceived; she is a well-off, edu­cat­ed young woman with a white-col­lar hus­band and a new pink baby, and she knows this is not hap­pen­ing in the real world she will even­tu­al­ly wake up to:

She is car­ry­ing a bomb. 

Your Sunny Day

 
My smart food­ie boyfriend Hans and I were work­ing side by side in his uncle’s Williamsburg restau­rant — Das Lokal with a k — a Euro-Southwestern farm to table nou­velle thing. And I real­ly thought I had it pret­ty good: a sweet lit­tle apart­ment, a lit­tle life. I admit it, at that point six months ago, I was enter­tain­ing thoughts: on my 27^th birth­day we would decide to move in togeth­er, even use the M word, you know, mutu­al­ly.

The Whore of Manzanita

 
Spring is hard in Manzanita. The sun comes out, the flow­ers bloom, the grass turns bright green, then a storm blows in off the Pacific and stays a week. We’ve been here all win­ter, lis­ten­ing to the water splash from the gut­ters at the cor­ners of our hous­es. The ocean heaves and sobs at the shore. We make soup. We walk the dogs on the wet beach or through the drip­ping woods, the green ferns and gray cedars. We make every­thing nice for the tourists, who won’t be here for anoth­er cou­ple of months. 

Four More Stories

 
MRS. TONNAGE

These three AM robins who go qui­et by six as if all that singing sends them back to sleep!

And the sounds dur­ing day­light: car noise, jet noise, deliv­ery trucks, and the ship horn from the riv­er. Why is it that her yard was qui­eter once, and she could actu­al­ly hear an entire episode of her favorite pro­gram with­out sim­ply watch­ing mouths mov­ing on the screen?

Questions like these keep Mrs. Tonnage upright. 

Niagara

 
The hus­band isn’t breath­ing beside me or else the bright snow falling at that angle against the wind­shield oblit­er­at­ing his chest heave and forc­ing his eyes closed is just how I see it— 

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/12/10/the-displaced-person/

Four Stories

 
HIS TERRIBLE FEELINGS

Whenever he felt dead to his paint­ing, Theodore went shop­ping. Not down the street, but out where the grass strips still bub­bled and oozed. Ten min­utes atop the brown­fields and Theodore would feel alive again, he’d need to rush home. His can­vass­es, once stalled, had nerve, torque, solutions.