The living room was empty except for the girl with pigtails and the going-away card she wanted us to sign. “Not now,” we said with bottles in our fists. The room’s orange glow reminded us of tanning salons and taxidermy. We made for the kitchen and found the corkscrew, the bottle opener, glutted on booze…

When I lived in that house I always used to look outside, and that day when I looked outside I saw where they left the baby. The baby’s parents were gone. The moment dilated. I tried to think about whether this seemed irresponsible. I thought about the question of what does and does not coo.…

We — those of us at the academy with money to burn — wanted to go to town. Of course, we always wanted to go to town, would have always agreed to go, whether we had money or not, because somebody with money would surely take pity on us and buy us something, but moreover…

5. The girl’s father arrives home from work and sits at the kitchen counter without taking off his work boots or rinsing out his thermos. He puts his head in his arms like her fourth grade class does when the teacher gets frustrated. The girl goes about rifling through the junk drawer because she remembers…

A woman rubs her right eye with the back of her wrist, listens to the engine hum and spit, and tries not to think about the empty passenger seat. The minivan headlights cut through the night as she accelerates on Interstate 81 South. Her boy sits in the back with a chapter book open in…

I watch my dead brother’s wrestling matches and try to count the number of times he gets hurt for real. In one, a wispy tattooed man hits him with a monitor from the commentary desk. In the rematch, he hits him with the commentary desk. I’ve got one of his boots on either side of…

When I am a little girl my dad takes me to church, and after Sunday school everyone drinks coffee and eats donut holes. I don’t want to talk to people, so my dad gives me his car keys, and I lay in the backseat with the radio turned to the country music station. Even in…

For some readers (and I am one of them), one of the best reading experiences is one that involves a certain level of surprise—not necessarily plot-related, although depending on how it is done, that can work as well. I’m talking more about surprise in the sense that something about the book subverts some of the…

The film begins with a color-saturated Polaroid that fills the screen. It’s of someone crouched next to what appears to be an archeological dig, pointing into a shallow pit and smiling, as if he had just unearthed an artifact. He looks to be of college age, or maybe a little older. He’s in a desert,…

Statutory Declaration Gender Recognition Act 2004 “I ______________________ do solemnly and sincerely declare that: 1. I am over 18 years of age. 2. I have lived as a male / female (delete word that does not apply) throughout the period of _____ years since I transitioned in __________ (month and year of transition). 3. I…

I lived six doors down from the Butcher’s Block on Ninth Street in 2005. I sauntered along the speckled gutter every Friday for five-dollar steaks and would, each time, thank Kyle profusely because we both knew Five Dollar Fridays were just for me. Returning to my apartment raw steak in hand, I would think of…

At some point we came to realize that every other tenant in this building is actually just us at a different moment in time. Some are at moments where they are older than us. Some are at moments where they are younger. The building is a long, one-story structure, and it looks like an old…