38 works
A slight haze blurred the skyline, and the expanse of lights faintly reflected in the wall-sized ceiling and bay windows that wrapped midtown Manhattan around the rooftop club. The buildings were dotted with lights like the chessboard’s light and dark...
Read More →“You’re here because you’re dead.” The clerk at the hotel desk, dressed in a red uniform with white-trimmed lapels, spoke in an abrasive, upper Midwest dialect, and said this like he was explaining something painfully obvious. He looked familiar, not...
Read More →The same sun scorched downtown Los Angeles that had seared the Iraq desert. Army Private First Class Samantha Cummings stood at attention holding a stack of boxes, her unwashed black hair slicked back in a ponytail and knotted military style....
Read More →The line of cars outside the entrance to the Mukoshima Outlet Park and Gardens complex, a short drive from downtown Osaka, stretched back a good 300 meters, and was steadily building in length. Only two hours after opening, the car...
Read More →“All rise!” the bailiff announced after he entered the rustic courtroom even though he was the only one there. Briefly he cleared his throat then repeated the command but not quite as loudly. Better, he thought to himself, much better....
Read More →My wife doesn’t laugh at my jokes anymore, and I’m not sure if that’s because they’re no longer funny or if they never were. Either way, she used to laugh at my jokes. She still laughs at Horace’s. I stopped...
Read More →United Transcontinental Flight 117 raced from a dawning sun. Descending, the aircraft surged, then throttled back. In first class, Matthew Thomas cracked a window shade to peer down at Chicago’s yellow-lit expressways. Matthew sighed. He was less than halfway to...
Read More →It was the talk of the town, and there were no two ways about that. A body found floating in Wabbins Creek? The body of a Negro? When you have a town like Kenton, population eight thousand, every one of...
Read More →Oomph! 1 Aloft a sky-rise ascribed to a sunrise, a head lay on a dweller’s pillow. Aground below his waking window, early dawn found its first accomplices. Afoot and all around the city the early sun made the street lights...
Read More →The house was new then, and newness itself was a kind of promise nobody had yet learned to distrust. Homewood, they called it, a new neighborhood on the far end of South Lorain, which was itself an old neighborhood. The...
Read More →The desk belonged to Hendricks, but the janitor owned it now. He was face down on the green blotter, one arm stretched toward the telephone like he’d been trying to call the one person in this city who gave a...
Read More →Donny Lewis awakes each morning and mutters a disappointed “Oh, man!” first thing because he’s still alive. Says it before his morning prayers. Maybe it is a prayer. Maybe “man” is The Man. “Won’t be long,” Donny consoles himself, as...
Read More →Excerpt from my novel in progress, The Shawl Seller The Saffron Warriors, as the other team prided in calling themselves, had already arrived on the field. Their team was comprised entirely of boys from the Kongposh colony, the inhabitants of...
Read More →Summer wasn’t there yet but that day the air smelled hot and sticky. The traffic was congested and my uncle’s van followed the cars in front squeezing its massive presence trough the last miles before the airport. The cabin was...
Read More →In Romania I grew up in one had no choice but to live inside; of himself that is. Freedom was just a word locked in the dictionary with no meaning on the streets. My grandfather did twenty years of political...
Read More →I was born an old soul, ready molded into this world but rarely allowed to be part of it. I was always in a fight, either forced to meet standards or rebel against rules I didn’t agree with. I don’t...
Read More →Susan looked out the window of the sleeper cabin room on the Via Rail train. Her aqua eyes took in the astonishing Ontario Autumn colors of the trees the further North she had gone. The 29 year old woman brushed...
Read More →From above everything seems close to nowhere. The steps, the dreams and hopes, the bus station or the bus itself seem to take us nowhere. The Globe itself seems to spin with a ferocious redundancy in a vicious cycle. * ...
Read More →Le faineant se leve au coucher du soleil, a l'heure ou les ombres s'etirent dans la rue, le visage pale, les cheveaux en desordre sur le front. Comme d'habitude, a la tombee de la nuit, il s'approche du miroir en...
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