Dad was in California for work. He was there to save four hostages being held somewhere in Los Angeles. During the day, he would visit banks and grocery stores and ask the employees about who they missed the most in their lives. He would draw the people they described on notecards, then at night over…

She’s tubby, he says. I’m thinking haunch, two sweaters, sweatpants (why is sweat such a selling point?). It’s the end of a demonstration against violence to women and my mind is quite ready to veer from justice and truth to personal judgment, though the speeches have been good, including his girlfriend’s. He turns out to…

Six weeks before they separate and a year before they divorce, my parents sit inside a pickup truck they borrowed from my uncle, waiting to help me move on, away from the academy. Yesterday, they sat in the football stadium and watched me throw my cap into the air as two F-14’s flew straight at…

After he died I went through his toolbox where I found a Budweiser bottle cap onto which he’d carved the words “no more” with a pocket knife. I have no idea if this was from the last beer he had or if it was an artifact of some wishful moment. I used to carry that…

What will we do about all these rats? we say, because everyone is saying it and there are t-shirts: “What will we do about all these rats?” printed in glow-in-the-dark ink across the breast. There are t-shirts but no answers. Then Romeo visits our village dragging one thousand hissing burlap sacks. Romeo instructs us to…

The Gill-man receives a letter from a retired ichthyologist. Only recently did she learn of what happened so many years ago on her colleagues’ expedition to the black lagoon at the upper reaches of the Amazon: the misunderstandings, the maulings, the gunfire. She is so sorry. She would like to apologize on behalf of her…

After the rain, there’s a sea of red. Red clay is notorious. It clings. Dyes hands and shoes and faces and hair. During the long, dry days, if the hot winds kick up, everyone walks away red. It’s a nuisance to dig into, chokes out more plants than it nurtures. Farmers have to ship in…

I was weird in all the wrong ways. Sometimes I’d find myself crying about it, clenching my fists and raging my tears at God. But it would pass mostly, and the feelings of hatred I had for myself would settle back down to the bottom of my being, and I could go about my normal…

All of the family stands silent around him. The mother and father have their hands up. The daughter, with her bare teenage belly and giant belt buckle, can’t believe this is what a human life can come to. The baby, in his giant diaper and coveralls, plays with three serving spoons on the floor, though…

There’s a hotel in outer space. Only the rich can afford to stay there. The satellite-hotel has a room where you can see through the glass floor and ceiling, submerge yourself in dust and planetoids like sprinkles suspended in jelly. We read about the room in an old, stolen issue of Discover Magazine. Viv doesn’t…

I met Verrant for a drink at Cy’s Roost, a small college dive bar on Welch Ave, a street known for the bars and tattoo parlors lining its sides which occasionally graced the airwaves featuring drunken student riots. The conflict in Iraq had been over for us for nearly two years, but the memories were…

The hour was three, the rest had gone to bed, a tennis match aired, and Nelle had something to say to her mother. Save the popping sound of the ball off the women’s racquets, the house was quiet. The sound, like an unplugged suction cup: puck, then puck, then puck. The rhythm calmed her. Tomorrow:…