The butcher was in a corner of the empty shop. The butcher was in a corner of the empty shop, and he was sitting and reading a novel. The novel the butcher was reading was about a bullied high schooler. The novel the butcher was reading was about a bullied high schooler with telekinetic abilities…

We begin here: Mae was late. Not only to this particular appointment, but in a broader sense: lateness seemed a part of her. As she rushed up the front steps, tripping on a flagstone levered upward by a tree root, she was flooded with the sensation that for years, possibly for her whole life, she…

Jessie’s been cutting corners all along, and we know this won’t fly in Hell Week. We’re in this musical, something about the 50s. Whenever we dance, she half-heartedly finds her spot. She flips her wrists and implies wind-milling her arms over her head instead of flying those arms and flexing those hands like the rest…

In all of the versions of this story there are dogs. The dogs roam in a pack – fifty, a hundred maybe – wild and unmanageable. The wooded area where the dogs roam is thick with brambles and nobody can get close enough to count. Nobody tries, either. Most of the dogs are big and…

It is like a lonely lighthouse at the mouth of some Norwegian fjord. It is like a lonely lighthouse set on a rocky island at the mouth of a Norwegian fjord that is leaning ever so slightly against an easterly gale. The leaning lighthouse is a matter of some concern to the little fjordic town…

I can approach the Soil Renewal Zone. There are viewing stations, weathered concrete platforms, along the western periphery. I can look down into a stand of trembling aspen, or a wetland scrape, or a flowering meadow grazed by cattle. I can bring my old, broken Leica and peer through the rangefinder, framing photos I’ll never…

4/4] The first time I shaved my legs I was ten and in a hotel room shower with a leg forward and my father guiding a razor downward. When none was left he looked up and said we were lucky I didn’t have any more yet. Yet. A word that after time became: not yet,…

A number of birds filled the sky. A melancholic trace of something in their song, almost bittersweet. No one else seemed to have any interest in them. Instead, their eyes skittered across the mound, searching.  It was still the hazy rose and purple of twilight. The mound took up a corner of the heavens, blotting…

Dad makes steaks. He gets butter on his fingers and slicks his eyebrows back as if he was Elvis in a jumpsuit about to shake his heinie on stage. All artificially boisterous and cartoonishly suave. He’s a Claymation person. Seemingly handmade, with features exaggerated as such. Doughy under the eyes. Pliable, plush cheeks. A face…

“There is something you can do for me, Lara.” My Oma rocks in her armchair. She’s put on real clothes: a floral blouse and sneakers with stretchy, coiled shoelaces. I’m thrilled at the chance to be useful. “But you’ll have to get out of your pajamas.” She says it with a wicked grin and draws…

Doesn’t make sense, Mia says to herself and surveys her foot. She calls a doctor and when the nurse asks the reason for the appointment, she deflects to calling it a twisted ankle. Sitting on the papery slip in the sterile room with the doctor holding her bare foot, his glasses tipping to the edge…

It’s like walking into a showroom of human endeavor. My wife Cara and I are often invited to parties given by Dr. Tony Schermbrucker and his third wife, Marta. Cara had worked with Tony’s first wife Jennifer when they shared an office at Children’s Services. I manage Cardiff Corner Books and the Schermbruckers are some…