1. Dolores adores ice cream; she even sports a Rocky Road tattoo on her right butt cheek. But after watching a food production documentary on PBS, she becomes aware of the plight of the dairy cows. How they crowd together in their airless pens. How the babies are torn from their mothers’ teats. How the…

I imagine Stacy when she’s not around, imagine her sinuous legs stretching across the firm white sheet of a hospital bed, swish. I imagine the sounds her body makes: Plip plop goes Stacy’s flesh as skin balloons with gelatin, screetch goes bone against bone as the cartilage curls away. A clink like zipper clips detaching…

After our island’s veterinarian died, the cat population exploded. We were already used to shooing them away from our doors as we left for work, whether it was to the counter at the pharmacy, down to the docks to fish or operate the ferry, or to teach at the only school we had. We knew…

Friday. First week of kindergarten. Everybody sitting in a circle around teacher. Waiting to go out to the buses home. You really need to use the bathroom. Like really, really. But the day is almost done. You’ll be home soon. While you wait, teacher asks what everyone wants to be when they grow up. You’re…

The spots are so smooth that Franklin wouldn’t notice them if he closed his eyes and ran his thumb across her like he was testing a piece of furniture. They are the size of typewriter buttons, making her look like a leopard as she lies across the bed in the unforgiving light of the motel…

I’ve heard that a blue whale’s veins are so large that a human could swim, naiad-like, through them, diving into the thick currents nourished by a towering heart that thundered like bells. Such a caprice is not easy to forget, and if I could take that bloody journey, I would indeed. I would wear platelets…

After his father died, and he became a father himself, Payam remembered his father’s excitement to tell him about the business of real estate, which was not so much an excitement about real estate as an excitement about life, which Payam knew, and which every once in a while he would tell himself to keep…

Thumb Alone in California, extended in fog, you hitched me down the PCH. One-hundred miles of snaking highway and strangers’ confessions. Then her. Last ride, straight through to Caspar. Her bitter stories lurched the wheel, shattered life tactics like so-many curves, like it was the road’s fault, not the shitty men and how she’d fallen,…

Every poem should have eight lines, two stanzas. Perhaps one stanza, six lines, should the topic call for it (see last week’s handout). Three stanzas may be acceptable, as can twenty. None, if you can do it. Point is, if the poem doesn’t work, failing grade. Punctuation marks count for half a point, each. However,…

When I first joined Grindr, I was lucky enough to meet a man who coached me through the shivering that came over me every time I slipped into bed with men. He was a gardener and worked long hours in the eastern suburbs, where he toiled in enormous suburban backyards for the hyper-wealthy, people who…

Wendell Ford owned and operated a two-chair barbershop in a dying strip mall, catty-corner from the Fullerton Public Library. Even Wendell had difficulty listing the two or three other businesses. This could be accounted for both by his age and by the unremarkable nature of whatever occupied the other storefronts. Perhaps one of the shops…

TO: Lesley FROM: Ada DATE: May 8, 2019 RE: Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) The purpose of this PIP is to identify gaps in your performance as my best friend and provide you an opportunity to demonstrate improvement and commitment. Concerns: I’ve forgiven you for not telling me that you’re dating my father. Since your engagement…