The mass of silvery flesh convulses in the sun, a vigorous struggle on the line reduced to a few pirouettes in the grass. The translucent mouth, lacerated from the hook, gapes for oxygen. Must feel something like sprinting a mile and having your head shoved underwater. Poor thing, Danielle would say. Why can’t you just…

Mayberry, USA Long enough without mentioning her, and she disappears. The Sheriff wants it this way. After the funeral he braces himself and their speck of a baby, the Boy, in their solid A-frame Town and lets her fade. He keeps no pictures. Forgets the long braid she twisted into a bun every morning with…

I. Two nights pass, and on the third day, beyond the smudged train window, we wake to green hills and the sun moving high. A baby cries. Children run in the aisle. The conductor roams the car, humming, making small jokes. He takes off his hat and holds the back of his hand to his…

The Job. Wake up hung-over, either alone, living in a motel as a result of an impending divorce/trial separation (she kept the house), or next to a half naked woman you’ve met/picked up/had sex with in the previous six hours (most, if not all of which, you can’t remember). When the beeper goes off a…

Coya is in the main lodge kitchen leaning against the cool wall. She watches moths tick into the electric fly catcher at the open door. Outside there’s that familiar rectangle of light, cut on the steps down. Beyond that, a square of indirect light makes a pitch of blue grass. She pays attention to anchors.…

It was after you got transferred, after the operation started, after the villagers began to leave in large numbers, the villagers whose lives you monitored from the satellite videos, the men whose beards extended to their chests, the men who hugged their weapons even in their beds. It was before you started taking sleeping pills,…

I don’t even know how Mom first heard the story. It’s not like we lived among Indians or even knew an Indian, though sure, I get why she told it now. In the story, which I must have heard two dozen times, or more, this tribe of Indians is out on the plains — “What…

People are a lot tougher than you think, you know. A lot of them are hurting inside but you’d never know it because they act just fine. All high and mighty and brave and gallant, every time you see them, and you’d never know it but they’re really hurting. My boss was suffering from pancreatic…

The Madison Square Garden jumbotron shows me looking up and almost falling over backwards. The crowd murmurs as I lean over the piles and piles of glistening bratwurst, the cheap plastic patriotic tablecloth in red, white, and blue — the sound of 20,000 people squirming, shifting in their seats. They’ve come to see me eat…

Cards, jacks and wooden guns with clothes pins clipping rubber bands like bullets stretched tight and ready. These were my toys. My stories were of ghosts told by a frail woman, a Christian for decades, who told them as the truth, the way a grandmother will do and a good churchgoer. My favorite toy was…

“Airside” appears in the collection SaltWater, recently published by Liberties Press. I. Take-off — Tasha Planes always make me feel extra safe and relaxed. Maybe it’s that thing with the oxygen masks and the inflatable jackets and those chutes you never get to slide down: it’s great the way none of this has changed since…

A woman, red lipstick on her mouth and her eyelids, buys a twenty-five cent pack of peanut butter crackers, and gets change back from the five note in cash. She uses cash to buy penny and nickel candy — which isn’t eligible as food. I’m supposed to throw her out when she comes in, but…