I wrote the first drafts of “Blanket” in late 2001, no more than a year after I decided I wanted to be a writer. It was the first story I wrote in what was then intended to be a novel-in-stories, although I only finished four of the ten or twelve I planned on. One of…

This story was included as part of my Honors Portfolio at Susquehanna University; it was likely written in 2002. The preface to my portfolio contained this cringe-inducing phrase: “I dislike of any form of political-correctness in fiction or poetry.” I was going through a few phases: emulation of William Gass’s eschewing of quotation marks in…

I meant to write a very long and thoughtful final post for my month as Writer-in-Residence here, but I’m sick today, so I will just take a moment to thank everyone who so generously contributed and made for such a great, wild month. My contributors amazed and surprised me with their various interpretations of “wild”…

For the past week and a half Damien has been trying to impress me. He brings treats, usually stale cookies, into the intern office that we share, beige walls and one tiny window and, in the winter, space heaters that sputter ice. When we’re there early in the morning, before the printing press has started…

You are completely naked and hiding-slash-reading a magazine behind a leather couch, deep in a sub-basement of David Hasselhoff’s mansion. You can hear him moving through the rooms, somewhere up above you—frustration bleeding through the syllables as he calls out your name in a sing-song voice. You wonder how much longer it’ll be before he…

Frank hadn’t seen Carolyn in five years. He should have looked first at her face, but he didn’t because of the way she leaned on a black wooden cane. Its mother of pearl inlay depicted a tangle of vines and blossoms. If left alone, he’d like to pick the stick up and touch it. She invited…

Mister Mei Locks The Cooler At Two You come, come in my store, never  look at me; red beady eye, lights up closed circuit  TV. Only condensation is real! Sweating feel of tripping  latch, reach for Keystone Light half rack like  lime boysenberry ice cream, in pie case. I give good  deal, good deal always…

At Sunday dinner, Duke announced he’d built a lake on their grandmother’s property. A man-made lake, he called it. Once it had been a spring-fed brook or a pond but Duke had dug it out to form this lake upon which the children were meant to boat and fish. In the summer they might even…

Loss is its own gain. Its secret is emptiness. — Charles Wright, “Reading Lao Tzu Again in the New Year” Intrusions of the Familiar A silence in the dogwoods refuses the morning any respite from its grief, a friend is dead, and the rain, days away. This waiting drifts the fence, a twist of broken…

This happened in Saint Louis. I was a regular at a half dozen bars. I managed to fail my language examination in German, then French, a language I had studied since seventh grade. By this time I was meeting students after class for beers. The students were always female and underage. I made $450 a…

SL: Three Squares a Day with Occasional Torture, your remarkable debut collection, forthcoming this January from Foxhead Books, features a wild assortment of characters and animals: voles, a fly, a monkey, the Swiss Miss girl straight off the box, a serial killer, a metallurgic woman, conjoined twins, even the Devil himself. This is not the…

The woman was eating a salad of all things. I was watching one squirrel chase another and cursing the day I was born. She said after one particular bite, I don’t understand people like you. At the same time the squirrel doing the chasing got distracted and went home. I remained, unprotected. I started to…