Dear Mr. Roth, Thank you for your recent submission of the manuscript The Flamingo of Cape Cod. While we are not accepting it for publication, we do endeavor whenever possible to provide feedback to aspiring authors of children’s books such as yourself. The inspiration for the book—the first ever sighting, in the summer of 2024,…

Once when I was young, I read a story in the newspaper. A man had gone on a picnic with his wife and children. They spent the day by the lake playing in the water, throwing a football, and doing all the typical things that families do. At the lake the man and his wife…

I. On the other side of the road, on a bench facing the ocean, she looked up from the book she was reading just in time to see them lift the body from the marsh where it had been stashed like dirty laundry, wrapped in a red-checkered cloth that looked like a picnic blanket, the…

Harlow met Stevie while watching an otter in light-wash jeans and a leather chest harness snort poppers. There was an anticipation of what was next or who was next; always going to the next and then the next and then gone.

Along the path. Through the forest. Uphill. Downhill. Autumn, winter, spring. In all weathers. Running. Always running. Last night was bitterly cold, and this morning – school. The grown-ups say it’s only four kilometres to school, but they never walk us there. Only rarely, on the coldest days, if there happens to be a free…

When Teresa confessed to Pastor John that she was pregnant, he proclaimed it immaculate, called her up to the altar on Sunday so that the congregation could bask in the glow of her blessing, her blonde hair tinged red in the light filtering through the stained glass window behind her, her belly just starting to…

The dusty lampshade around the bulb cast more shadow than light, and her mother’s deathbed lay in semi-darkness. She glanced over at the neighbor. Old Mrs. Ryan nodded her agreement, so Joanne flung the curtains open. The pigeons that had congregated outside the window left in a flutter, and the pewter-grey light of the October…

Sun drenched skin, browned with age and looking like the old wrinkled leather that it was, stretched over hands that were more tendons and prideful obstinance than strength. Jasper turned the pan in a smooth, easy motion that he had taught himself over the last forty years panning for gold. He didn’t really care if…

Nen was resting in the living room, as ordered. Maybe resting more than recommended. It hadn’t been that long. The cast was still on her arm. She was reading a detective novel she had read and reread maybe every six months since she had been a freshman in high school. She had the mystery memorized…

First there is the paper folio of tickets, parents’ excitable talk. During long afternoons, your sister holds away the delicate, flimsy sheets, but she points out her printed name there, and yours. Then, the sudden bustle of departure: the four of you crammed into the backseat of your neighbors’ station wagon, the drive down to…

The old man sits at the kitchen table, though it is no longer much of a kitchen. The stove doesn’t work, but that is because he no longer bothers with it. The sink drips slowly into a basin, though only because he has let it. A mouse skitters across the counter, but it is no…

I had to agree not to get pregnant. I told Vick Clover, the recruiter, that I didn’t intend to have sex with anyone any time soon, but that didn’t matter. As “a woman of childbearing potential,” I had to produce a negative hGG serum test to participate in a Phase 1 drug trial. Then, I…