We sit at the table arguing about our dead mother’s collection of slinky black dresses. Apparently Mom told Glinda she’d get them, but didn’t tell Glinda she already told me I’d get them. “Split them already,” says Birdbrain, rolling his eyes. All he wants is the house, its basement brewery and taxidermy workshop, and the […]

You go with the former prince to the town where a girl tied a yellow ribbon in your hair. That was ten years ago, but you want to find her now, to tell her you never should have parted ways, that that’s when all the trouble began. You’re supposed to find out more about the […]

As the trend grew into a way of life, unbiased news stories were almost impossible to find, but perhaps the most-watched coverage was during the first year, at the height of the pill-meal furor, when Barbara Walters came out of retirement to interview a devout pill-taker. “It’s easier to choose,” the housewife explained, braiding her […]

Nate and Kelly didn’t notice the cows ahead until they suddenly found their way blocked. They were out for a walk with their dog in the county park, and earnestly talking, they’d passed obliviously through a gate to cross a field leased by a local rancher. Clouds like loose feathers floated in a blue sky […]

Anyone from Castle Island could tell you that the ferry ran every half hour on the hour from the pier to the mainland, but in actuality there were two ferries (though they were always referred to in the singular) and if their captains were steering straight and the wind wasn’t too interfering, they passed each […]

Skip swallowed down the last of the coffee, rinsed out the mug, put it into the dishwasher, then put the gun in his jacket pocket. He turned off the overhead light and peered through the blinds. Suburban night had fallen. The Jensons’ porch light was already on across the street. He thought momentarily about the […]

Elizabeth lost a bracelet on the path beside the river. It was not an heirloom, not expensive at all; still, she did like it, the small yellow perfect beads on the loose elastic band. Before going back to grade papers in the late afternoon, she sauntered along the high river bank and ate her apple. […]

1. In Darfur, there exists a car bomb that’ll dismantle a Rolex into tiny shrapnel cogs. In Egypt, some widow, 57, dies of exhaustion, starves on the rinds of her own slanted tongue. Trending now: Russian infant learns Scriabin’s Sonata No. 5 in E-flat minor on toy piano. Trending: Syrian rebels steal secret ingredient to […]

Woke up this morning to it singing James Taylor. It has a terrible singing voice, nasal and vaguely operatic at all times. Never sings any songs reminiscent of opera, though. A magical louse. Who cares that it’s magical, it itches and does worse things than you’d probably guess, worse even than bad operatic singing. I’m […]

There was once a little planet called Oysitar that orbited the star of Xena. On Oysitar, there was a city that from a distance looked like an oyster, a pearl-white city nestled in the mountains. This was the city of Shiraz, known for its stone-carved streets, silver streams, and archways filled with light. It was […]

Dear Mr. Bath, I am writing to apologize on behalf of my friends and me for ruining your son’s recent trip to Water World. In honesty, we were intentionally trying to be overheard by strangers, but did not anticipate that your child would be directly affected by our extravagant lie. Believe me, this was not […]

Katie’s only connection to the outside world was her Columbia House music club membership. When she got off the bus after school, the first thing Katie did was check the mail to see if the CD of the month had arrived. Would it be Mariah Carey’s new album? Or Genesis’s greatest hits? One day an […]

I had the cab pull over a half block away from the entrance to Janey’s school, and begged the driver to wait. He was Sikh and I couldn’t tell if he understood me. I said, “Please! Hold on! Hold on!” This whole business of cabs and tight schedules was going to take some getting used […]

I’d like to keep bees And honey the doves. I’d like to furnish the turtle a home I’d like to teach with love And grow apple trees. I’d like to sing. I’d like to teach harmony. [Perfect harmony] Coke wants in And it wants today. Coke it, Coke the world— [Sing with me] And buy […]

Introduction by a Noted Scholar From the day of The Chicken’s invention in 1938, we ingested its symbols and made them part of how we saw ourselves: White for purity, a dash of red for the strength The Chicken lends, the eternal shape of a lesser, westward Australia. Soon we could see The Chicken with […]

I sat in a high tech chair (in a low lit clinical room) with large hollow eyes like an insane lemur while Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation sliced out bad parts good parts rotten parts unnecessary parts and all I could think of was Dalí’s and Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou (you know the […]

there are tender things to say to you on this occasion I know there are but I can’t think of them now the words get all dumb in my throat I wish I could say what I feel girl, your Sega Genesis heart is so precious I want to suck all the splinters out of […]

The world that opened, as if Kanye were Hades and Taylor, Persephone, and we all believed in the Greek myths and traveled back in time to save her, to have our say, shake a fist. I mean, everyone, just everyone, asks if I’ll write a poem about the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. What deep […]

“Is it something out of a science fiction movie?” the librarian asked. I was trying to be so quiet — while she helped me look for a book that could change my life. “Do you smell it?” she asked; we stood, dead center in the aisle of Biographies. I stared at the spines — Sting, […]

[built from the comment section of the youtube film “1 Hour Burning Logs in Fireplace”] If that fire was a potato, it would be a great cat. I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY DON’T LET YOU MAKE SNOWFLAKES. The best part of this laughed after burning wood—when the person’s hand came onto the screen. I’m surprised how […]

We have to unite all 12 tribes the sun is now up I haven’t been home yet I posted one of my favorites in a new blog, check it out! You guys have to go see the movie New Year Eve feeling the holiday spirit rise an shine with the TRUTH. Grouper en Papilote w/ […]

You know, if we do manage To expand our lifespans, health and intelligence by Merging our bodies with machines Manipulating genetics and Cellular regeneration There’s going to be something Very special about previous generations, the ones Who managed to transform such a small space of time amid sickness, old age and death into any kind […]

My evil twin was at the show last night, twitching like a nervous jarvis cocker, turning his head to ask how he knew I wasn’t the evil one. I once bathed in the blood of evil twinnings — run down in fast food parking lots, ground into value meals sold to lonesome desperadoes. My evil […]

My wife and I lose each other in the casino. I try the car, but she’s not there, try again the slot machines, but no. For half an hour, I move from garage to game hall, but she’s nowhere, nowhere. We must be missing each other, I think, me taking the elevator up as she […]

I have never been to Nebraska, but I overheard a trucker talk about the headwinds there, how it picked up his semi, and just set it down again, like Pan riding a roller coaster, he said it was like he had a second chance but he didn’t use it, he said second chances are for […]

I will walk into the Atlantic and not walk out which is funny because living next to an ocean is supposed to be a privilege but it’s really more similar to having a loaded shotgun in the closet at all times. In addition my memory suffers indefinitely from itself, memory. Low tide attracts widows and […]

There’s pennies in your smile fit for train tracks. I press my ear to your chest, check the time. The outcome of this is determined by who we choose to direct: John Woo demands two trains barrel toward each other like a high speed Mexican standoff, doves flying along each one. David Mamet never shows […]

He was the king of the five-day romance But he always hung around for six He was bad with bathtubs Often slipping when he showered He had his dead dogs paw prints Tattooed to his chest In pencil thin red ink Just under his broken chin He had a bumper sticker that read “Jesus loves […]

I may die. Pleased to meet you, May. I MAY die! If you’re not sure, then I don’t think I can help you properly. Ask me a direct question about IKEA and I’m sure I can help. Should I kill myself? I can’t give you advice about a situation in your life, but if you […]

It’s hard not to notice the resemblance of pterodactyls and dragons, even though you know the humans weren’t around. Not even the proto-monkeys were around or whatever it was that turned into proto-monkeys. The world was awful then, the flora & fauna struggling to figure out who to eat and who to feed. DNA tests […]

Quack, went my computer. My officemate Tara and I always tried to outdo each other with the dumbest alert sounds, like fart noises or snippets of awful songs, but even the funniest ones got old fast. The decrepit-sounding duck meant I had new email. It was from my manager, Renee. Lissa, would you stop by […]

There Was an Old Woman There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had a lot of kids and got aid from the state. She didn’t have any women friends because, how could she? She lived in a shoe without indoor plumbing and spent her time bouncing babies on her knee. The […]

The girl is Evening, or Dusk, or maybe she’s Night just after the clouds have all huddled on each other’s back for a sleepover. Sometimes it’s hard to know. If you’d prefer, you can call the girl Black or White, but please don’t call her Blue. She’s supposed to be a happy thing. Blue is, […]

When William Tecumseh’s Ford F-150 plowed through her living room window, Agnes Dufrein did not move from her chair. The chrome grill spat its greasy heat into her face and one of the eighteen inch tires crushed her left foot, but the sensations couldn’t reach her brain. Her house was full of dirty plates and […]

One evening the old man told me there was a woodchuck eating his lettuce. He was too tired to sit and wait. He gave me the .22 and flashlight. He thought it would be good for me, killing something, saving the garden. It would build character. I did not want to kill anything. I had […]

We imagined fireballs pumping red with white-hot cores from our ungloved fists. We leapt and on impact felt the gravel chipping from sidewalk panels, stone crunching under the thick rubber of our small boots’ soles. The sun glinted gold as a coin from the copper buttons on our overalls. We huffed, heard that scuff of […]

It’s Monday after school and I’m like, at least it’s not Friday. The windshield wipers are on too fast for drizzling so they make this nails-on-chalkboard eek eek sound. She’s driving and even though I don’t know anyone in this town and I don’t care either I’m embarrassed of her and her old clunking Jeep […]

At least he wasn’t drinking too much. I set the plate of mini-pizzas on the coffee table. It was only his second rum and Coke, a huge improvement over last time. My husband and I earlier passed the bong with him. Getting stoned dulled Cullen’s agitation. His last visit was a disaster. Billy and I […]

On Thursdays you play racquetball with Jim at the university’s recreation center, taking advantage of staff rates because you both do the cleaning, pushing brooms and mops across acres of hard tile floors well after classes end, emptying trash bins and snatching stray pencils and lost notebooks and misplaced earphones, anything the students leave behind, […]

“Scarborough Fair” Anne to Emily Dear Emily, I really wish you would come and visit me here. I need to be with someone familiar. I have been to the seaside again today to collect more pebbles and to clear my thoughts. There is not much chance for the latter. The Fair is still on for […]

Luisa did not scream as she hurled forward, somersaulted, and then plummeted towards the backs of two hulking guys leaping down the escalator with Olympian ease. At the top of the stairs just as she was about to grip the handrail, they had knocked against her with such force that she seemed lifted out of […]

1 My friend Evan is acting in a film set in Sarajevo. In it, his character reaches a point of despair and becomes a petty thief, taking a flashlight and smashing through a jewelry store window in an industrial complex containing both a church and a McDonald’s. His accomplice, a young towheaded hood, pressures him […]

My sister’s cancer surgery is coming up, and I hate thinking about this while I eat my oatmeal with flax and fruit, and I’m thinking about smoking a cigarette for the first time since, well, can’t even remember, and I hate that thinking about something I hate to think about makes me think of something […]

The sound of rock cracking, of timbers snapping like celery stalks and the unmuted avalanche, concentrated into one sonic roar down the channel of the mine shaft, these were not recorded. Nor was any video taken of the men’s faces down below, their mustaches gaping over black-hole mouths, their eyes weak with horror. The other […]

I was at the baggage claim when Jim called with the unfortunate news. “Guatemala is closed,” he said, voice fluttering in two. A baby was waiting for them in La Esperanza, but the other day a trafficking ring had been exposed; the orphans, it turned out, weren’t really orphans. When I visited six months earlier—a […]

That summer I was trying to keep a low profile. I was trying to walk the straight line between jail and unemployment. I was too familiar with both and didn’t want slide either direction and my luck was holding. I had a job. I had an apartment and a roommate who didn’t ask too many […]

There was once a 35-year old farmer in Southeast Asia who was killed by his beloved pet hippo, Strabo, when it dragged him into the nearby river and mauled him to death. “Strabo is like a son to me–he’s just like a real person,” the farmer was heard saying to his baffled wife just before […]

At the gym I’m told that I need a code to enter the locker room which must be guarded from ghosts of old treadmill walkers. There’s no shower. You have to go to another locker room a floor down for that. I wonder about Christ The King. How cool to have a locker room named […]

9th grade: Dear Jeff, You had a goofy smile. In shades of your grin I could see the child you were before, building forts in the living room and racing matchbox cars along plastic, malleable tracks. You thought your old fancy car, the one your Dad gave you, was the only reason anyone liked you. […]

At the top of the ropes, Santo crouches, his real eyes swallowed in the tear-shaped eyes of his silver mask. Behind him, the Blue Demon lies face-down on the canvas, the white laces at the back of his blue mask half-unfastened, the mask pulled up so that it appears the wrestler’s skull has been punctured […]

She reads her magazine. She does not watch the door. When the doctor comes in to call her she will lift her head at the last moment. He will see she is calm. This morning Aaron tried to hedge her panic. Told her not to think too much about it. This wasn’t really the hard […]

The McIntyres are a lower middle class family composed of Anthony “Tony” Andrew McIntyre (b. 1952), Carol Marilyn McIntyre (b. 1949), Heather Lynn McIntyre (b. 1973), and Kelly Ann McIntyre (b. 1975). The McIntyres originated in the Northside of Chicago, IL, emigrating to Suburbia, South FL in 1983 where all four family members remained until […]

My family and I grew up in Akron, Ohio. My father worked for Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. An important thing to tell you that I know now that I didn’t know then was that working with rubber has a strange affect on the consumption of alcohol. There’s a chemical at the plants that made […]

They fired Robert Frost, apparently Because he was rude to students, Refused to dine with colleagues And did not publish. He had to go. This was 1911. Then his farm Failed and all of Europe went to war. Millions died. It must have sucked. But a few books later, Robert Frost The Dude Who Just […]

Dear Yann Martel, “I started writing seriously when I was nineteen,” you say in a collection of writing, This is My Best. It’s not your own collection. It is instead a collective, an anthology, a place for authors who span different genres — the comic, the visual, the scientific, the fictional, the political — to […]

I’m an online writer. Apart from a few print publications, I can only be read online. Sometimes I feel “online” is like a birth mark: can’t get rid of it. Follows you everywhere. Obscurely related to your gene pool. Not pretty perhaps but, in the right light, one might take it for a giant tick […]

The very first piece of fiction I remember reading online, while sitting at the desk where I worked as an administrative assistant in an anthropology department, was Glenn McDonald’s story “Digging For Polar Bears.” I found it because I was doing research about polar bears for my BA thesis, so that would have been 1998, […]

How did you discover your online writing community? I was writing screenplays for fun when I met a guy on a screenplay writing board. He told me about Zoetrope and urged me to join. He was a young man but died of lung cancer shortly after I joined the site. I wish I could tell […]

I remember a professor wheeling a computer into class to demonstrate Netscape to a room full of people who had not yet seen the future in 1995. Textbooks required for the class included indexes of websites, books that cataloged websites. We coded the text of the university library’s public domain Red Riding Hood collection into […]

I can trace a much more direct line between my online literary life to the fulfillment of my dream to become a novelist than I can from my academic training to the same, although I’d never be here if I didn’t live there, I guess. I’ve talked about this in detail elsewhere, but I’m so […]

I discovered the online writing community, Fictionaut, through Travis Kurowski, the founder of Luna Park Review. I’ve occasionally participated in other writing organizations, formal and informal, and sometimes exchange work with friends. Fictionaut has definitely impacted my writing life. I’ve met other writers whose work I admire. I’ve discovered literary magazines that I love (like […]

How did you discover your online writing community? I read Blake Butler’s story, “The Gown from Mother’s Stomach,” in Ninth Letter, fell in love with it, read his bio, went to his blog, and found in the sidebar links to so many of his other online writings. I discovered so many journals and so many […]

How did you discover your online writing community? I’m not bright with computers. However, I learned about some online journals back in the late 90s and thought I’d take a chance. I’ve always liked that online publication might get one’s work seen by more than print journals. I still love many print journals, but feel […]

In the fall of 2010, The Northville Review published commentary from writers about the history, nature, impact, and future of online literary community.

She has the flu. Still. It’s been six months and she’s papoosed in her duvet, mounds of tissue boxes and magazines and half-finished bags of jellybeans around her like memorial cairns. She props her laptop on her knees and chain-watches YouTube videos, forcing hollowed coughs to remind me that she’s still sick. Then she’ll forget […]

It’s possible that I’m walking in the mall with John Travolta, looking more corporeal than in his Vinny days, less hot that in Saturday Night Fever, but hell, I sold my disco ball to a church, and maybe John and I were/are lovers despite his wife having a new kid, and it’s possible that the […]

Today I let Bengie dress himself, and the flaw in my logic is apparent immediately. The shirt is on the top and the pants are on the bottom, all right, but he has chosen his favorite shirt, the red Spiderman shirt with the black spider in the center, and his favorite pants, the super action […]

My buddy Alan used to steal ten-speeds for a man named Gravy Boat. He was easily pushing four-hundred pounds, perpetually sunburned, and in possession of an endless supply of short-sleeved, all-over-print button-ups with Marvel Comics fight scenes depicted on them. The two lived in the same apartment complex on Belden, met at a summertime tenants’ […]

It was late in the day, and the sun falling behind her set its fire in her red hair. When he was twenty-five, he thought it was only the young who felt like that. And now that he was sixty he was shocked by the ache that overcame him. Would he be like this when […]

Lucas asked Garvey to write down three things on three tiny sheets of paper, three things he cared most about, that he would never want to get rid of. Garvey thought for a while, decided maybe he really did like his family, and maybe seeing this behavior specialist was really a good idea. He wanted […]

for Hannah in her ninth month She stomps villages. Whole populations scramble around her feet, screaming, streaming in any direction they can find where her feet won’t land. Bridges bust against her knees. She guzzles reservoirs, grabs whole trees and chomps– leaves and roots and bird’s nests grind between her teeth. Cars lie squashed like […]

I knew a guy in my college dorm who once stood shirtless before the full-length bathroom mirror, his belly bulging, pecs sagging, shoulders dipped, head slumped, mouth turned down, eyes vacant. “Before!” he announced to the echoing room. Then he sucked in his gut, puffed and flexed his chest, pulled his shoulders up and back, […]

I want to write blue movies for Lifetime for Women, torrid scripts with 30-something Tori Spellings in ’em, champagne flutes, plunging necklines, and bad actors wearing wine-dark sharkskin suits. My heroine shall be so clearly out of her depth, at Vanderbilt Law School, we glimpse her good side all a-rinse in blue pools of torchlight […]

This is a low-budget production. I sit on the beaten recliner, staring at the blank television screen, feeling as dark as the room. There are no great cast members in this movie, no elaborate plot schemes, nothing but the dull constancy to keep me watching. My leg has fallen asleep. I smack it one time […]

Shane grips Marcy’s hand and wonders how it stays so warm in this cold rain. All around him it falls but he doesn’t hear the tapping drumbeat it makes on the ground. Only the rushing of water forming channels speeding down the declivities of the earth’s surface toward other larger channels like the ones beneath […]

Yesterday, my wife told me she was thinking of leaving me again. She’s been threatening for years. “Good goddamn,” she said. “Over 3,645 birds have been found dead in the Gulf!” I pretended concern. “Enough is enough,” she said, filling her big faux leather suitcase. I popped the lid on a can of beer. In […]

Other parents think Bob and Betty are strange. James is two now, and breastfed. He sleeps with Betty and Bob and takes Betty’s nipple like a champ. He opens the refrigerator door and pours the milk on the floor. He hugs the dog’s neck too hard. Bolts into traffic. Runs with scissors. James bashes Bob’s […]

Congratulations! Thank you for purchasing TallyInc brand results for your completed life. The categories and data are by no means exhaustive, and can seem a bit random, but we do our best to explain some results, because your life mattered®. Begin. [Results for 57 year old male/Mixed Ethnicity/Some Education/From East Coast Region] — The fastest […]

1 Menage a Trois Richie Thomas sat at the bar between two chicks – a platinum sizzler with a killer bod drinking her whiskey neat (and just by the way she tried to ignore him, Richie could tell she wanted him) and a Marian-the-librarian nursing some foufou ladies’ drink – and while Sizzler looked like […]

Carolyn fusses in the kitchen. The chicken breasts she boiled last night would make a nice salad, but she’s craving something hot. She fills a pot with water from the tap and puts it on the stove. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, says the baseball player on the big screen in the living […]

At first the kid just stands there, shivering in his stupid black suit and staring at me through the rusty screen door. All I want to do is grab him by his bony shoulders and shake him. “What do you want?” “Steve?” He still won’t come in. Just says my name in the same sort […]

Dear Dr. Kildare, I would like to come see how you manage your exciting life as an intern, and also how you part your hair over on the side like that. I would like to wear high heels and get a disease that might kill me and that’s exotic, perhaps one I caught in Paris, […]

Oliver has just emerged from the Metropole’s air-conditioned lobby and already Hanoi’s damp envelops him. Beneath his shirt, sweat trickles. With a handkerchief he blots his forehead, but it’s unstoppable. Unstoppable, too, are the boys who accost him each time he leaves the hotel. “Buy from me,” they shout. Postcards. Pirated copies of The Sorrow […]

Ernie gave Maurie a shower for her fiftieth birthday. It was a glass, chrome-free square with a brass shower head that hung down like a drunk giraffe. Their old shower had been built into the tile wall with a semi-opaque glass door. “Clear as God, Maurie,” Ernie had said when they looked at the display […]

When she rises from her broken sleep these midwinter mornings, alone, with dawn bleeding in around the borders of the drawn curtains, what comfort does she find? Perhaps she moves a curtain edge aside, just a sliver, only enough for her eyes. She might look and listen, but her lawn will remain empty and silent. […]

“For centuries, French Roman Catholics have been taught that gluttony and gourmandise rank among the list of seven deadly sins. The association of gourmandise and gluttonerie has long rankled local epicureans. But today, a group of top French chefs, intellectuals and religious personalities is fighting to convert gourmandise from a sin to a state of […]

He said we should go outside, look at the stars. Corny, yeah, but I said I thought so, too, still wearing my seventeenth century shift and bodice, my chunky black buckled shoes. We took the golf-cart, searching its headlights for the dog-sized deer that never get off the island, genetically stunted harts and does. He […]

I like Kevin Jenkins for lots of reasons. His failure to offer me sympathy after I tell him about my father’s death last weekend is just one such reason. Instead, his eyebrows jump like a mime’s and he reaches into his knapsack. “Did you know Alex died, too?” “Not little Alex?” “No, the other Alex. […]

I’ve been examining the long waits between eye-twitches on Jan’s face. It’s winter and the doctor in the ER let her come home. Rain comes in spasms, outside the city is wet, cold and crappy, and we both hear the low sounds of damp pigeons roosting. There is no tent over the light-well which is […]

“Do you have bad breath?” “That’s a nice thing to ask!” “I read that dragons have bad breath. I was going to ask if you were going to eat me, but I didn’t want to make you mad.” “And asking a dragon if he has bad breath won’t?” “I’m eleven years old. I’ve never gotten […]

When the grave opens, the interior mirrors sky. You there, gaze in my direction, the way of up. Our hearts emit pounding that shatters pine boxes; even the best mitered edges will split. Some call ours a vampire story, but the waywardness that fills us connects to no dark, no light. It hones the alternate […]

It wasn’t no damn solid line that he crossed. He pours his cup of coffee. It was a blurred line. The jury knows everything, and they will make their decision today. Today, judgment day. He won’t need to fight to convince anyone after today, won’t need to wait for one single decision to come down. […]

A dozen hide in his closet. Shiny and taut, pressed to the ceiling the way club girls glom around a velvet rope. Seamus Duncan dreams balloons in the shower, can almost hear their curves shouldering for position as he swabs a Q-tip in his ear. His lobes are plugged with knobs the size of overcoat […]

That year, we were the Tomato People, she and I, Mr. and Mrs. Homegrown. During the winter of our twelfth anniversary and third year of counseling, my wife, ever the gardener and recycler, decided to harness all her thoughts about me, about us, and put them to better use by trapping them pre-speech and holding […]

I spent hours in the office pondering the bunkers under buena vista park. They were old shipping containers, someone said. There were doors in the hillside that lifted free under rectangles of sod, and they were cold and iron-heavy like chest lids or waystacks of sheetmetal pushed down into the dirt by some acolyte’s new […]

I liked the motorway. It went places. I often stood on the bridge and gazed at the white lines. The boy with purple hair who lived next-door to the pub stuck out his thumb at the side of the motorway. It was easy to leave. From the bridge, I saw all sorts fly by: plastic […]

A hurried man in green overalls and red ball cap introduced himself as Otto Armbender. He took one look at my front yard, scribbled a few notes on a pad, and said it would be a piece of cake. I appreciated the image of coiffured icing and sugared rosebuds. He said all they had to […]

Dark sweet cherries. Plump and flawless. Give or take five pounds rinsed twice under cold well water and set to air dry in a ceramic colander. The heaping mound glistening on the counter is tempting, but all I can hear is my mother’s fearful voice warning us to stay away from cherries. Not because we […]

Now, I am become death, destroyer of worlds- J. Robert Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad-Gita She didn’t want to see the last remaining American Cold War Titan II missile. He did. For weeks, Lavender had wanted to go back to the Tucson Botanical Gardens. She slid into the driver’s side of Angelo’s blue ’51 Chevy truck, […]

Comma didn’t want me anymore. Said I was too blank. Said I was badly suited for her plush line and soft curves. Said I didn’t understand the need for gentle transitions and sweeping speech. Plus, I was often pushy. I was hard. Period was more my style. Maybe Dash. Had I tried Exclamation? She said […]

The day she said she was leaving came the bullet I wanted to make out of my wedding band. I walked home imagining the how, the where, the why, never who. Her father-in-law lumbered around our apartment, grabbing her furniture like a throat; her mother asked me to say nothing. She surrendered the cutlass of […]

Under the charcoaled early morning moon, Kanye West awoke in a puddle of his own chunky vomit in the middle of southwest suburbia, New Jersey. He was unfamiliar to the area and still lingering in midnight rejected depression. A slight breeze wisped his sticky, unshaven cheeks. He was anything but prepared for this. The sewer […]

My name feels wrong in my head but right in your mouth. You could be anybody: half asleep on a train, drool extending from your jaw. Our bodies jostle like baby alligators swimming in a bucket. I reach for my eyes and find televisions. I reach for my knees and get tired. You take a […]

Tanned from basking in the divine light but beyond the pale of celebrity’s glory, most holding their numbered bronze entry halos in their hands, they line up in the thousands outside a certain conference room in St. Peter’s Basilica, the queue winding out the entrance, forming a perfect semicircle around the right arm of the […]

I begin breakfast by tying my shoes. I don’t go around smiling with plastic vampire teeth. I own seven color tvs, one for every porn. I have been to church lately. I know how to make it look like an accident. I ask my neighbors about their day to see if they can be helped. […]

because polar bears are warm in the cold and because they live so very far away from me so I won’t be able to hear them so I can’t be blamed for my ignorance I would ask a polar bear for love advice because they force their young into ice holes to swim even before […]

You say mother would send you boys to shoot crows off her rabbits. Strung from metal hooks she’d slice anus to throat ripping blood knuckled under the white web of muscle, gristle, bone. I remember the boys from out back shooting birds. Imitating rock- stars, biting heads off feathered bodies. Puking at the taste of […]

Can I try freebasing meditation? Each time I try to purse my lids, I only find that the zippers stick. The bags holding my ivory-brown bowling balls in are stretched thin. I can’t make things well—waters rush while under my bridge. My bell doesn’t toll. It wasn’t made hollow. I try to meditate. I treat […]

Sorry. That’s it. That’s all the story. * * * * * FOR THE HATERS: I hate Apple computers, french onion dip, and those little fake sausage balls they put on pizza. So go ahead and hate poetry if you want, I can’t even pretend to give a shit. Just remember that hate is a […]

“Where the fuck is my painting?” I didn’t know Vermeer had such a grasp of the English language. “Did you hear me, asswipe? Where the fuck is my painting?” I put my Diet Dr. Pepper at the foot of my rickety front door. “Vermeer, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an asswipe.” […]

First things first, get’m outta the way. Yessir, I killed a bear once with m’two toddler hands — or a bar as the newspapers’d have it, aw shucks — but damned if it ain’t happened half the way y’heard it. And I don’t really talk that way, either. I’ve learned to, by now, because that’s […]

Star Trek time warp anomaly taking you where Kirk and Spock never dared go, for Roddenberry never risked writing such a script. The usual teleport malfunction and behold, here you are in David’s ancient village on that revered eve. Is the orbiting starship Enterprise pointing the way? Do choirs of celestial beings sing through your […]

Hi momma, I know I called you yesterday, but I wanted to write, you a letter, too; get some thoughts out of my head. How are you? I hope your doing okay; don’t go worrying about me. The boss and all his stooges do enough of that for me and you both. I know the […]

It was 1965, and she was proud. Dad enjoys the story, mentions he met Brigitte Bardot at Heathrow. If only he’d known how to speak French. We sit at the dinner table, wild years all behind us, and imagine dozens of different lives, passing the gravy.

Harrison Ford works at the Hallmark store In a northwestern Pennsylvania mall; I’ve seen him there eleven times, or more. That granite voice, that chin scar I adore, That smile, both asymmetrical and small: Harrison Ford works at the Hallmark store. Though sentimental drivel I deplore, I’ve bought more cards than I care to recall; […]

I pull on your arm and you finally follow along, away from Monet’s garden and toward the metro. You look back every now and then. The metro starts full and slowly loses its passengers as we head north. I watch the trees pass, and a three person band comes from another cart. They start their […]

I know I’m supposed to admire some girl drummer like Moe Tucker or Mrs. Karash, that would be more inspirational, but Moe Tucker? I want to learn to play the drums like my hero Alex Van Halen. When I think of Alex driving the beat on “Jamie’s Cryin’” I get chills. Mrs. Karash calls it […]

Back when I went to boarding school everybody wanted to lose their virginity in the same spot: the one where Ted Danson lost his. Rumor had it that he lost it on the fifth floor of School House Dormitory. That’s where students migrated every evening around nine thirty, where we’ve been making out for decades, […]

In those days Dawn was new to Chicago. She got a job at Starbucks, took a few drawing classes and made plans to apply to art school in the fall. She had never wanted to be one of those women who follows a man just to stay in the relationship, but when Charlie told her […]

I’m standing at the kitchen counter watching CNBC on the little TV when a squirrel comes up to the patio door, stands on his hind legs, and looks in. I don’t move. He doesn’t see me even though he’s looking right at me. After a moment, he drops to all fours, goes over to some […]

Written By Shanny Jean Maney, Age 11 (Jurassic Park) and 13 (Independence Day) I. Jurassic Park Your thoughts are bigger than my head. 1 How many years old are you? I’m eleven, so…? 2 I like your glasses. II. Independence Day I like computers, too. We have Windows 3.1 now. I changed the background of […]

The big news in the cancer ward is all about that motherfucker John Edwards. Cheating on a woman with stage 4 — no one can believe it. And the kids and the two Americas. “His political career is down the tubes,” they say. His wife’s days are numbered, I know. I always thought he looked […]

Drew Carey lives in Los Angeles, I live in Oregon. I still see Cleveland in Carey’s pierogi shaped breasts. Still see Cleveland in my square blast furnace shoulders. Soot and sulfur are trapped inside the slits of our belly-buttons. The grease of generations of Cleveland steel workers balled up inside. The train tracks over grown […]

You had me frozen, cooperative, and attentive at the first line: Alright stop. Collaborate and listen. And when you end-rhymed listen with invention, I was a subservient student to your mass-marketed fabrication, sitting ringside leading the cheers for the fly-by-night Great White Hope heavyweight champ, knocking out legitimate contenders to your newly polished double platinum-selling […]

P. Scott Cunningham: On Februrary 17, 2010, Cleveland Cavaliers center Zydrunas “Big Z” Ilgauskas was traded to the Washington Wizards with the understanding that they’d buy out his contract, allowing him to return to Cleveland—the only team he’s every played for—in thirty days. Those are the facts, but what really led you to write your […]

Yesterday Brittany Murphy died; the coroner released a statement saying she died of natural causes. She was 32. I watched just about any movie she was in because she was sexy-cute. She made a lot of bad movies so this took some perseverance on my part. Now she is gone. No more bad movies, no […]

It was the first time in the show’s extraordinary history that a certified public accountant was asked to host Saturday Night Live. Allan Barnicle could hardly believe it. He’d never acted on stage or performed in a comedy club, never dreamed of a career in front of the camera; he didn’t even consider himself particularly […]

I want to wear a simple but sexy outfit. Jeans, not intentionally torn jeans but actually worn jeans, slim leg (not skinny leg) boot cut jeans that flatter long legs. I want to wear a low cut wife beater and a silver necklace that hangs down the center of my chest and big hoop earrings […]

Make sure you Can sing Robert Johnson Even if you Like Beyonce, Rhianna, Or Lady blah-blah, Learn the dialogue To Natural Born Killers, and Don’t be afraid To hold a gun, Even if you never Shoot one Don’t ever drive As fast as James Dean On a one-Lane Highway, But blast the stereo While you […]

for the Weekly World News They keep saying I’m a threat. Bringing up that time when I was ten and I bit the alien baby. No one bothered to ask me why. Let me tell you, He asked for it when he reached with his podded fingers, trying to touch my ears. I’m tired of […]

I duck into the closest public restroom. My all-access badge could get me into the shelter staff bathroom, but it’s up two flights of stairs. Last time I left the computers unattended, one of the residents starting watching porn in front of some kids. The director had the whole section shut down until they could […]

As they walk, the wet pavement sparkles black and diamondy. Overhead streetlights shine down on their blessings, his new wife clamped inside his right arm, his daughter hooked against the left, this merry, makeshift family. They laugh. It was a stupid movie. Why do they even make them? As a car leaps the stoplight, he […]

Dad got obsessed with poodles and firearms in his old age, but I didn’t know how badly until I came home. The house smelled all musky and dogs were everywhere, teacups and toys and the big ones who fetch the ducks Dad hunts. Both couches were gone, replaced with glass rifle cabinets. When I took […]

My life needed something, so I took a pottery class. There were only a half-dozen people in the class and I was the only man. The teacher was an aging, albeit attractive hippie who wore smocks even when she wasn’t teaching the class. I recognized her immediately. I saw her once at a tea shop, […]

I’m in the shower, head down, catching pools of water between my fingers and letting them fall to my toes. I’m calculating the distance and the water’s rate of decent. It’s hot. I think about wanting it cooler. And like that, it starts to cool down. So I think, well, there ya have it. I’ve […]

He hasn’t had a wedding ring in years. When George’s knuckles began to swell — a little arthritis — his ring dug into his finger so bad his wife Loren took him to the ER and had it cut off. The ring, not the finger. He never knew there was a tool to cut rings, […]

Seth sits in Nevada. Something is wrong with the goddamn air-conditioning, he yells from his seat. His partner is out of earshot. He hears voices and sees brown images on his screen. They flicker and zoom in. He responds to the voices. Yes. Yes. I see. OK. The explosion is in an obscure city in […]

I discovered I was pregnant the morning of my 37th birthday. I had suspected it for a few days, but I had been through this waiting many times–sixteen months of trying for my son, now five months more–and so I managed not to be too excited, allowing myself only a few nods at my husband […]

Last week in class the assignment was to write about something we wish we hadn’t done, something we would take back if we could. At first I didn’t care about it, I just cared about going to the swamp behind our house. But then Zach the idiot, who smells half like food and half like […]

Sometimes, life just hands you a jolt. You might wish it was a Jolt cola, cold and frosty, more speed in that bottle than a gram of cocaine, but you might not get that wish. You might get, instead, a jolt to the brain, 10,000 volts running through your head. Once you had a boyfriend […]

Dog food, I need dog food. Windex I need Windex.. Paper towels, I need those too Every time I walk down this aisle I think of your lies! Lies! You suck the blood from my life! Oh look at these cute shoes. FORGET SHOES! I’m gonna watch you take your last Breath I’m gonna Rejoice […]

The first rule of yoga is to breathe like you have never breathed before: long, ropey lengths of air pulled past your ribs and through your nose. Do this again, slower if possible, and feel the breath move through your insides. Do this until you go blank or until your body hums, or until you […]

The front door flung open. Big blonde Jim, his toothy grin and short round Mrs. Standler. Expectant. “You must be Nelly. Come along. I’ll show you your room, it was just painted,” she said. Sunlight flooded the narrow hall. The dark Victorian house. At the top of the stairs, a yellow cream room. A view […]

Even though she lives right next-door, I haven’t been inside Krissy’s house for six years. Not since fifth grade when she started looking like a Playboy centerfold. But every morning from middle school until I got my car I waited with her at the bus stop, acting like she was still the flat-chested tomboy I […]

I hold the mixtape made for my latest potential boyfriend in my hand, turning it over and over as if it’s a Magic 8-Ball. Flipping to the B-side will give me an answer. To give, or not to give? My uncertainty is answer enough. I slide the mixtape back into its plastic case and plunge […]

I told myself it was déjà vu. My young student, waiting for a bus in a rain so hard and relentless that I imagined a film set – men standing on the roof of my car holding a hose. Claire, oblivious to me, trying to light a cigarette under the plastic bus shelter. But this […]

The snowflakes are roughly the same size as butterflies. They flail in the air like drunken jumpers, the sky and land fused in an unintelligible relationship through their great insect migration. Jaime watches them fall on the street in a horrible gray pulp, beneath the tires of vehicles, as he plods down the unshoveled sidewalk. […]

You have to make a choice: realizing the reality of things, or feeding pigeons. It’s a tough one because there are pigeons right here and the reality of things is at least one bus ride south. The pigeons are grey and black and small and they like to be fed. You like to be fed […]

The potato hit the kitchen window with the suddenness of a determined and misdirected bird. It was a surprise to all of us, even our mother, who had thrown the hot, fully baked vegetable as hard as she could. The shrapnel showered the kitchen counter in a starchy radius. She’d had no recourse – Dad […]

I record my voice saying Love me like butter over and over and I play it while you sleep. I whisper it in your ear, while you read poems I write about your hips. Today I start a Weezer cover band, but I can’t play guitar or drums or bass or tambourine; hell, I can […]

Maybe the clutter on the kitchen table will remove itself to a place more suitable to Aunt Ramie. She won’t see it in the woods. Big deal. So there will be staplers in the trees and post-it notes on toadstools. She is no forager for chanterelles, she of the Twinkies and Krimpets; she’ll never notice […]

Click here for another version of this story. The other guys—Mike, Josh, and Doug—are in the living room too, where the killing takes place. It’s night. The only light radiates from a 52″ HDTV and Doug’s Mac laptop. Weed[1] is in the blue recliner, while M, J, and D are on the beige three-person couch. […]

Th3 0th3r guy$—Mik3, J0$h, & D0ug—R N th3 living r00m 2, wh3r3 th3 killing t4k3$ pl4c3. 1t’$ night. Th3 0nly light r4di4t3$ fr0m 4 52” HDTV & D0ug’$ M4c l4pt0p. W33d[1] i$ N th3 blu3 r3cln3r, whil3 M, J, & D R 0n th3 b3ig3 thr33-p3r$0n c0uch. Th3 $urr0und $0und’$ l0ud, b3ltng 0ut y3ll$, gun$h0t$, […]

Some were secrets. We hardly ever saw them. We knew nothing except that they were so-and-so’s father—and the less evidence we had, the more mysterious and James Bond-like they seemed. Sightings were clues. They led to theories and speculations, fueling our imaginations and vague suburban yearnings. We tracked these dads like endangered species. We knew […]

Under the soothing lamplight we laid the new boyfriend out, converting the sofa into a kind of demonstration table. Lauren and Melanie cooed in his good ear, and rubbed all his muscles, to relax him. I gulped down two more bites of my SpaghettiOs, then took a blade and penetrated the new boyfriend’s ample stomach. […]

Before they venture out for the evening, they get ready together, standing in cramped bathrooms thick with the smell of burnt hair, deodorant, hand soap and lipstick. They wear silky thong panties and short denim skirts with frayed hems. They wear skimpy tank tops—the kind with the thin shoulder straps and open backs revealing their […]

“Something’s wrong with me. I think I might be happy,” he said. “It’s almost like time has stopped,” she said. They lay still for a moment. He was quiet because he was trying to detect whether or not it was true, about time stopping. She was quiet to emphasize her point. Then she took his […]

Try to be a good girl and don’t bother me. Mom said this often. I was a good girl. Factories in my head produced beautiful things that could be cheaply purchased in dime stores. You could wear the clothes to church and not stand out. Early on I learned not to stand out. Excellence made […]

from LIFE The Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of All Time by Editors of LIFE Magazine. Reading level: Young Adult Language: English Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.8 x 0.8 inches The Dauphin died at sixteen from an ear infection. Mary was young as well, and it is not known if she nursed him, watching him die. A […]

In one squad car, a man in handcuffs tried to hide his head between his knees. The man had long, dirty hair that hid his face, but he wanted to get as far away from the cameraman as possible. In the other squad car, two police officers conversed. The lights on their vehicles swirled, though […]

After the exit interview, and after he’d left the building, Niall saw the woman who’d interviewed him. He was carrying an unwieldy cardboard box full of office things to his car in the far reaches of the parking garage, and she was in the passenger seat of a car that sped past him on its […]

There was once a man who died at the age of twenty-one. He had black curls and brown eyes and wore designer underwear. As a pre-schooler he learned his numbers by watching Sesame Street. As a youngster he burned the back of June beetles using a magnifying glass and the sun’s rays. From the onset […]

The resistance bought a retired cruising ship. The previous owner was sobered up and taken from his shack so a notary would acknowledge a legitimate passing of hands. The notary nodded approval with the signature. Without delay, the ship, Imagination, was re-christened Resistance with a crack of champagne on its hull. The previous owner wept […]

Since the divorce had gone final, the matter settled once and for all, he’d taken to a masochistic bingo of sorts. He wanted to digest it wholly, move it on, much as he’d down psyllium caps to pass a prosciutto, mortadella, and fried eggplant sub taken on in a weak moment. He emptied a thin, […]

On his twenty-sixth birthday she broke his heart, he was no longer the man she thought he was or should be. She said, You’re no longer the man I thought you were. They argued about it. He wanted to argue about it, it felt good to argue about it. Screaming, yelling. He wanted to hit […]

What I need you to do is encase me within a significant amount of cellophane then stand in the room comb your hair wipe off your blush or whatever that is and pretend as though there is not a person encased in cellophane also in the room.

You were eating on the sidewalk and I asked you how to get to Buena Vista Park because I’d gotten turned around somewhere and didn’t know the city yet. I was meeting my friends there to lay on that hillside that faces the sun. I remember the wind was so strong that it tore paper […]

I will exhaust the wallet of your mouth, prick you like a spindle, abandon strollers. Even though I am as hung as a beach ball, my hands are as thick as dreams.

Wang Hao and Peng Luyang are sitting on the leather sofa outside of Coach Cai’s office, waiting. Their posture is perfect and they stare straight ahead and with great focus. A film is being projected onto a wall across the room. It is a retrospective of their table tennis careers and it is perceptible only […]

The girl was found in a shallow grave at the back of a neighbor’s yard. The neighbor’s dog, Sally, a yellow lab, had been digging where the grass grew high against the fence. “That dog’s always trying to get into those woods,” her owner Vernon Lockhart said to the local reporters. His wife, the one […]

The phone rang at 3:18am. He rolled over, looked at the clock, then the phone itself, silhouette and shadows. His first thoughts were an accident; his elderly mother, his sister. He lunged for the phone, breaking the lamp. He picked up the receiver. “Hello?” He waited for a few seconds, waiting for a family voice, […]

Until he rode his bicycle through her lane at the tollbooth, Linda had no idea she felt this way about Charlie. There had been the initial attraction to him when they had been introduced at the Fourth of July picnic, but since then Linda had always felt an empty compliance toward Charlie’s affections. He loved […]

Every time I tell this story I cry. Someone puts me in a chokehold or they eject me from their house when it is cold and blustery and my eyes have no choice. I freely admit it—like a messy old tree I’ve gone sappy. At the time I lived in Cleveland, attending graduate school. I […]

The stripes have ridden high since ’58 and as I slice through the threads of fabric scabbed over in usage, I think about: heater to feet sleeping; marathons of Star Trek; one-two-three past now apparative figures in various poses of resting eating crumbling… to the final break away swallowed in the pit of whatever happened […]

She told me I needed to circulate. I told her to piss off. Well, no, I didn’t tell her that. I wanted to tell her that. I strenuously thought it. I sent it out into the greater realm of intention and possibilities. But what I said was “Okay.” She’s my boss. I need the job. […]

Inside the coffee-shop, dressed hat to boots as a pirate, he asked to sit at her table. She looked pointedly at the empty tables about them, and shrugged. He pulled out the chair, its grate a dog growling. She tried to ignore his cocked eyebrow, thick as a caterpillar. He asked about her book. Research: […]

Dennis Washington This must have been just after Denzel Washington appeared in “Malcolm X.” He was having a period of career ubiquity—suddenly he was everywhere, collecting kudos and awards and magazine covers. There was a commercial airing concurrently—for toothpaste or back ointment or day trading, I don’t remember. But the handsome African-American actor cast to […]

The canard that technology’s a male world persists despite women like you who assemble elaborate algorithms almost at a glance. Thus you program our future, convincing me the latticework of antennae on Bear Hill has wired itself to transmit your fondest thought painlessly into my cortex. Among arrogant stainless buildings housing hi-tech firms you pause […]

Thurgood noticed it a few days after he planted the garden, the way the deer, always in groups of three or four, crossed the edge of the driveway just outside his office window each afternoon around 5, 5:30. It happened so regularly, he soon got into the habit of dropping whatever he was doing[1] and […]

The text message that got lost in Northville Connecticut was aimed at an overweight boy with a pale white face marked by two severe pimples almost luscious in their sheen. The text was a critique of a popular song being played on the radio, which the author of the text believed was being listened to […]

This is not exactly what you had in mind. You intended to go from here to there. But circumstances have taken you from there to here. Looking around. There is still plenty of here, but not as much there. So you wake up and decide this is the day to get there. It will mean […]

I watched the man picking cardboard boxes out of the big dumpsters outside. The dumpsters were in the alleyway between my building and the businesses on the other side. The other tenants and I used those dumpsters for our trash. The businesses used them for theirs. This was around the time when I spent whole […]

The ground pulled out and away and the sky thundered down, immense and fast, and then pulled back and back and the grass was rushing up again. Michael pulled on the swing ropes, kicked his feet and flew backwards, his head leaning out and his eyes tearing from the wind. His heart galloped, but he […]

Dear Mom, Camp is tough and these sandwiches you made just aren’t enough. Can you send some more? We went horseback riding today. I rode on a horse. Mom, do horses have meat? I sat on the horse and I’m pretty sure I felt some meat in there. The horse felt like meat. I will […]

At recess Dan Lincoln, a.k.a. The Delinquent, knocks Leon Schwartz to the pavement. Leon’s body rolls like a deer smacked by a truck. I let out a squeak, cover my mouth and wonder if anyone heard. When Leon stops rolling his knees and elbows jut at odd angles. The Delinquent circles, grabs a sweater sleeve […]

Sunday afternoon, two weeks before the first day of sixth grade. I milled around the Bon Marche, and Mom sat in the women’s lounge, book in hand, waiting for me to finish. The store was oddly quiet considering it was back-to-school shopping season, which left me to navigate the terrain with ease, my arms invisible […]

Beneath your varsity jacket there’s a bleeding throat, and you greet me with four-syllable words. On the staircase next to your Converse All-Stars, I’ll keep it quiet that you know so much. I am greeted by boys who press their chests to Girls who stir screwdrivers with their Fingers entwined in fingers, it figures, they’re […]

Dear Mom: Here in Brunswick, morning came wearing a cool wrap and mist in her eyes. Fog often lifts from Grove Lake and inches its way to our place just before the sun opens its single eye. We dug up the rest of the potatoes this morning. Coincidentally, eighty-two were removed from the ground. I […]

Over the summer, The Northville Review engaged guest poetry editor Whitney Freemesser. A graduate of Vassar College, Ms. Freemesser is the author of VH-1’s Behind the Music drinking game, excerpted at the New York Times, and I Am the Snake, Bite Bite Bite, a three act play starring staple removers. She also skates as Queen […]

The elastic crest of sunlight arced across the bog, crippled by drought, the alabaster bones of the family dog revealed through the cracks of dried mud, like a reminder that as dinosaurs once ruled this land, so did Dusty, a golden retriever with a brain the size of a T. Rex’s and a body just […]

I told him that, to me, he was like William Henry Harrison on his thirty-first day in office: he was dead to me. He told me that me saying things like that is why boys don’t date me.

I broke down on this road before, clicking a dead flashlight over and over, as the surrounding darkness stirred, suddenly full of plans.

The stoic man with the fake beard Like bootleg cotton candy, Stationed in front of Rite Aid Swung a mean bell. So mean I couldn’t tell He only did it one month a year. Waiting for my transfer to the 94 On my way to junior college, I walked up to his red pot, Nodded, […]

In the interest of karmic balance, our Guest Poetry Editor agreed to accept all poems submitted to us on July 13 and August 29 — provided the authors allowed her to retitle their work. We thank the two poets whose work appears below for their bravery. + + + + + NEW TITLE: The Extra […]

It is their twice a year visit to see the relations. This includes the husband’s brother, a shyster if there ever was one, cousins who taunt the kids for the rejects they are and the brother’s wife, a nervous, fluttery thing. Her white Nylon kerchief is tied with a flourish under her chin. She pulls […]

Sometimes there was snow, and we’d leave water trickling from both faucets. I’d lie on the couch with PBS turned low, listening to the clinking in the sinks and thinking of icicles melting from eaves. My mother would still be asleep in her room right where we left her, still wearing a coat and gloves. […]

As a boy Edward had stayed in the confessional several times in a row. The priest was drunk and couldn’t tell it was the same kid over and over. The tiny door slid open…”Scobbity bobbity…tell me your sins…” Edward confessed what he thought were sins, then said the Hail Marys. He stayed put. The little […]

It was 10th grade, the year of Hurricane Isaac, which mowed down the mighty oak in the teacher’s parking lot, snapped it like a cinnamon stick and prompted Mr. Luckanza to teach us about dendrochronology, counting the tree’s rings. Grown-ups wanted to turn everything into a lesson. It was the year the football team had […]

Today I wanted to wear all my clothes, not on top of each other, but I wanted to take them all with me, bring them to my meetings, lay them out as proposals: the jeans&polo shirt mean “I’m interested but not committed;” the khakis&collared shirt mean, “I like this idea&have the money to prove it, […]

When it came to house hunting in Dublin, downgrading to a one bedroom flat had been our savior. But it also left us with one glaring problem. We only had one bedroom. If there had been space, we would have bought a sleeper sofa for ourselves and given Briton the room as his own. But […]

What is an inside joke? Wikipedia entry. Urban Dictionary entry. Uncyclopedia category. Everything2 definition. Definition by an SEO writer. Does a inside joke have to be shared? Where can one read inside jokes at The Northville Review? Here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Other places one might find inside jokes: A website run […]

Wilton’s left shoulder joint was his first ball and socket to go. He simply had a cuff now. The only rotation he could conjure from his left arm required the vicarious use of his hip joint. The doctor said, “Your shoulder joint died in its sleep. It was a painless death.” Wilton didn’t cry on […]

I think the waitress, Shelley, thought she was giving me the hook up with the meat, even though all I asked for was the two egg special with an English muffin. She sat it down and smiled at me and made some kind of remark about how I looked just fine as it was but […]

apologies to Robert Hass Pickpocket— it’s not you, it’s me j crew j crowded Skateboarders— you are the slaves of skateboards! Seen through a movie screen: one hundred million dollars worth of crap Shoplifted half the day; no one punished me! All the time I pray to Jesus I keep on reading US Weekly Even […]

Grandpa Dick was the greatest, and everybody loved him. Except for when they didn’t. The whole Watergate thing. I guess his approval ratings were pretty low for a while. But after all that — after he left the White House and played some golf in California — everything was better. He was probably the best […]

Garvey sometimes wished he wasn’t born with such a perfect body, a body everyone from the neighborhood knew to compose just one man, called Garvey. Not even a blemish to allow for some mockery of him to build some character. He was left to proudly construct a man called Garvey, all by himself. People used […]

Will laughter ruin this entire conversation? Of course it will. So do. I come to you in my reasonableness. You wear yours skin tight. We could be married. You could believe in me. But all you want to do is purchase a box set of Beethoven symphonies. But if you have the money… well that’s […]

But on a morning when my wife so softly dented stands naked in front of the closet still deciding between the dark blue and the black I feel as the last calamitous emperor of Rome might’ve felt writing with a red can of shaving cream love is and without quotation marks

The old man walked slowly down the sidewalk, feeling the bottoms of his feet, a little numb, against the soles of his old wingtip shoes. He was happy because he still had feet. He could walk, and he was not in a nursing home. The sun was bright and splashed a brilliant white wave down […]

for you this is the season, with its vision of a new and hopeful woman staring at the ceiling in your kitchen, her back leaning against the just scrubbed stove, her ankles bare and crossed, a veteran wineglass limp and expectant in her hand.

Each tiny errand took hours. We couldn’t find a microbus with squeeze room for two, we were distracted by the radioactive caves, our tram stopped for a corpse, we were detained by the police for going to the sauna without a passport. That was Vladivostok. The police in Ust-Barguzin wanted us to translate their Chilton’s […]

I bought a tiny wind-up boxing kangaroo because I thought you weren’t coming back. You were 500 miles away, watching that band with the girl in it you’d dated years ago then left at the movie theatre when she said she didn’t like Punch-Drunk Love.Weren’t they on Letterman? Anyway, I made the cashier stutter when […]

At the party I took a moment to soak everything in. Camille posing in daylight. The children bouncing in a castle. The tres leches cake lit up with candles as if on fire. Men and women sitting on white foldout chairs, grateful for days of thoughtlessness and drinks topped with mint. Karen will you marry, […]

The tour groups seem to be getting smaller and smaller. Nobody cares anymore. The elderly men wear moustaches and Hawaiian shirts, have slow-moving grey-haired women at their sides. They follow me through the wide hallways. “Now we’re getting to the newer stuff,” I tell the Old People through my widest smile. My hand extends toward […]

They’re all here, the doctor’s wife, so alone she’ll talk to anyone, including herself, the Nicaraguan boy scaring smaller children, too heavy to play like the others, even in water, his tattooed teenaged sister in shorts and black t-shirt so wet it sags dangerously low, a tanning-table, siliconed mom who sends her boy to play […]

Forecast is being serialized semiweekly across 42 web sites. For a full list of participants and links to live chapters, please visit www.shyascanlon.com/forecast. * * * * * Jack came home late. As usual, he did not bother to be discrete. He simply marched across the street from Joan’s house, tucking in his shirt. Helen […]

Nancy Drew, Sleuth XXX Oak Street River Heights, Iowa July 14, 2009 Dear Authors: I imagine that I am at least familiar to all of you, and beloved by some. I’m in urgent need of your help. Despite popular opinion, my existence is insufferable. It’s not just that I’ve been at the mercy of several […]

Mr. Smothers is showing us a film here in Social Living class, seventh grade. He’s just given us the school’s take on sex –it’s good if you’re married, bad if you’re not. He wears no wedding band on his finger so I’m confused–he’s old enough for it but if he isn’t hitched-up and gets some […]

Aunt Emily’s green asbestos shingled cottage was forbidden. The rusted sign nailed to her front door spelled the warning: No Trespassing. Her lot was overgrown with clumps of chicory and wild carrot; snake grass and patches of sand. On the lake side, her breakwall was made in the accident of riprap: a rough surface of […]

At the progressive dinner party, everyone got a little drunk and stopped after the third house. Vegetable platters were left uneaten. A few of the husbands took over the kids’ video game. Someone rubbed the dog the wrong way, and it bit him. Calvin and Iris introduced themselves to more new neighbors. Calvin pointed to […]

You’d think more people in the Happiest Place On Earth would have knocked themselves out trying to keep him from spilling into the lake or crashing into the 1950s diner, but not at all. My mother, of all people, ran with souvenirs falling out of plastic bags, knocking Canadians out of the way as she […]

One minute me and Bernie got our attentions on the game, next Bernie says to me, Watch this, man. He snaps his fingers and his old lady, Heidi, who’d been at the dining table reading, raises her head. Hey, baby girl, Bernie says. My buddy here’s been staring at your tits. Nah, man, I say, […]

I know what it is before I open the envelope. The postmark gives it away. Who else would be sending from Gdansk? After Alapayevsk and Keiem and Quero and a handful of other obscure European corners that I don’t recall. And it’s the stiffness of the envelope, so I know it’s another photograph. But mostly, […]

I look for a voice, my own, under the mattress, behind the dresser, and even down in the basement corner underneath layers of spider webs and six or seven shells of roly-polys, sucked white and left to rot in the dampness. check beneath the cushions. maybe it’s there along with enough change for a pack […]

Tyler Perry and I sit at opposite ends of a bar. He is wearing alligator shoes, shiny pants and a tight muscle shirt. I’m immediately concerned for his neck, because the dimensions of his head are overwhelming. Q1. Do I: (a) Offer him a neck brace. (b) Burn him in an effigy I construct out […]

Two weeks after moving into his first solo apartment, my best boy friend found he was messier than he’d known. He’d accumulated an inexplicably clogged sink full of stinking grey water, iceberged with egg-crusted plates and empty Texas Pete bottles. The maiden filling of the dishwasher coincided with my first visit. As I reached the […]

The zombie movie from last night was a hoot. She likes fast zombies, he likes slow ones, they got it covered. Now he’s driving, wants her to leave the radio tuned to Science Friday. Fine, all she’s doing is reaching over to turn up the volume— His hand darts out. Stone fingers clamp around her […]

No one seemed to take much notice of the stranger. He moved amongst the fine art students at the University like a ghost, hovering near the far end of the classroom during still life portraiture or hanging back in the corner of Jamison’s Pub on Friday afternoons. Sometimes, he appeared as an old man, pale […]

It had been fifteen years since Father Joseph had taken on the monastic life. The Order had been delighted to receive him. The Abbot recognised that Joseph was a very small ember, but had harboured the hope that, at a mere forty years of age, he might, with God’s help, rekindle the flame of their […]

There is an Object Center in a commuter town. There is a large parking lot with curbed islands of freshly laid mulch. The islands are rectangular and arranged in uniform rows throughout the parking lot of the Object Center. There are streetlights planted in the center of each island, wired with electrical cables beneath the […]

You know how it is with lost balls, they just plink and sink and disappear forever. But in the dream it wasn’t just a two-buck ball dropping out, it was the whole breakaway set of clubs barrel-assing down the slope in its pullcart. It crashed through the whip grass and plunged into the swamp and […]

I asked her who I should give my Christmas list to this year. Who would be out buying? She said, Dad. Her “read” stack was growing taller and wider. All Oprah approved, she said. She lay in bed with her black fuzzy pillows, her Lanz nightgown buttoned up to her throat – and hardback, important […]

Myth Number 1, Section 4a There are two things in life: Myth and Pedestal. Once you know that, it’s just a series of formula equations of configurations of myth to pedestal ratios. The beginner’s module goes like this, with general rules and basic equations: 1. The value of a Myth (M) is 0 until added […]

A. Offensive Philosophy Go to the open area of the floor and square up for air shot, while ball is otherwise preoccupied. Lock into the rhythm of the floor resilience, decibel level of the crowd. Follow through. Attack where they’re not, probe soft spots such as Kingly Babb who’s notable physical presence belies gumption or […]

Once while drinking, I met a used car salesman. He was good company. We talked. A leggy blonde walked past, and he said that he wouldn’t approach her because she looked “TMU.” I asked him what that meant. He told me to come across the street and he’d show me. At the dealership, he showed […]

My seven-year-old wants a navel ring, and she won’t take no for an answer. She drifts into our room at night, hours past her bedtime, eyes closed and joints stiffened in rigor mortis, mumbling navel ring, navel ring. We cancel her subscription to Teen Vogue – though she mostly just flips through it for pretty […]

Last night, when I told my husband that my period was two weeks late, he made a little joke about the doctor who’d performed his vasectomy, and how maybe he should have gotten some references. Then this morning I read an article in the newspaper about how women who are getting older sometimes drop two […]

For some reason I’m shocked when my dad shakes me to get up. I blink away the sleepiness. He points to the ground. After 20 push-ups, my arms start to burn and my chest knots up. If I complain about chest pain, will he wait until I’ve finished to call 911? He squats down, sticking […]

A cold and rainy morning that begs for a do-over. The van’s a rolling tomb and I’m buried alive inside. Hydroplaning wheels carry my daughter and me for miles while I ponder how to deal with an alien. Trumpet blaring ring tones Announce never ending conversations. Traffic reports morph into Hip-Hop. The rear view mirror […]

Warm clothes out of the dryer — the scent hooking its aromatic arms around my neck, like a college girlfriend before a kiss in the laundromat. And something, long-buried, rises like a serpent when Seduction blows her snake charmer’s flute. Is this why the sight of a fresh line speedbags my heart, like that of […]

In my pristine green wash room, I turn a black wool sweater inside out, so my hand beading will remain intact when I gently rub-a-dub-dub. My jeans are old and frayed, but memories line their pockets. I extract sunflower seeds from the seams, and it seems I’m once again cheering at a soccer game in […]

He had told her it was a treat, yeah, but it was her own damned fault for assuming the gooey middle would be marshmallow.

When low on funds, my friend, Lindsey, dates for doggy bags. She’s 27, very cute, and passes for 21. She posts her picture on Craigslist and describes herself as a college student majoring in early childhood education. She refers to her love of dogs and her enjoyment of dancing and travel. She’s partial to her less […]

was such a wonderful thing, a product of its time really. Sure, you can look at a movie from the 70s or 80s and tell from the horrible hair and style which decade you’ve been transported to, but the 50s and early 60s had the type of class you can only see in that Eastman-Kodak […]

An old man with a dignified moustache as a doorman at an elegant hotel and yet he has become too old to lift those heavy suitcases so what happens? He is demoted to washroom attendant dispensing pristine hand towels to snooty hotel patrons This is what I hate about the 1920’s! All the jobs were […]

Through the gate, the papery taste of Goofy on tongue. A heebie-jeebies excitement, a burst of shivers. Make like Kerouac, buddies on the road. Feathered feet across cartoonish cross-sections of America, across Main Street USA. Pupils dilate and seconds turn to minutes, minutes to hours. Park paths wander to adventure, the start of happy trails. […]

Sudoku made me snap. Up to that moment I was fine with everything. Even the knowledge that Eminem planned the assassination of JFK. Or that the Crips or Bloods could knock at my door any second and blow me away. I was safe humming along the road in my souped up Corvette, drag racing late at night and […]

The tension had been building; they surrounded my best cities, stepping over the border every chance they got, then a step back, apologetic façade, and they’d start tormenting again. But I had never used the Ultimate Weapon; never let the million-pixeled simulacrum descend in any of the hundred wars waged through the many flat-screened ages, […]

Malcolm’s desk was a paperwork ruin, like a left behind village after a tsunami had washed back to sea. Insurance claims overlapped estate taxes and invoices drifted unstapled, set loose from stern letters demanding payment for failed procedures. He shuffled and stacked and went so far as tearing off perforations and affixing stamps to pre-addressed […]

They were standing on the lawn and the driveway. He thought he saw some sneaking around the side of the house. They were chanting something. He hesitated to ask his wife what it was. It sounded like “Kill, kill, kill the book.” And were those staves they were waving? They looked like staves. Where the […]

Crime Scene Cleaners, Inc. Training for the future … Earn Top $$$ from home: Wanted! Professional and Technical Engineers Specializing in— Latent loss of life (or limbs); Assassinations or other bothersome and as Yet unexplained unsightly carnage or butchery— Insightful tactics, procedures, and forensic tips supplied; No-account relative homicide(s) accompanied with Grave-side service; late night […]

So sorry about your extremely overdone steak, sir. You see the chef isn’t really a chef, but an illegal immigrant who works very hard for minimum wage. I’ll get you a new one, pronto. The joys of restaurant management do exist, but none come to mind as I toil away into the late night hours. […]

The man, the one dying, the man who is her father, his last breath escaping will reach her, penetrate. She is penetrated. She is lost. This girl, she is rowing in the clouds, the lake of the sky, the blue. This man, the man who would have been her father had he the nerve or […]

“Tell me a story,” Meryl says, and George replies by shaking his head and giving her the look.  She knows the look well—she’s been on the receiving end of it for over thirty years now and counting.  But the relationship specialist from Denver told her and the other 300 women at the seminar that the […]

The day I left Indiana was the day I left Indiana for he first time. I headed to New Mexico to become a cowboy. And, when I left Indiana, I left to leave all the mistakes I’d made, like yelling at my mother when I was drunk, and asking a girl named Penny to marry […]

When the house is quiet a breathing develops in common with the walls. I wonder about the meaning of silence as I inhale all the air that ever was in this small city of zeros and one without purpose. Later I’ll take my guitar to the park.   They tell me I have a permit to […]

When one reaches retirement, there are suddenly extra hours to fill up.  If you’re lucky like me, not long after you retire The Salvation Army runs a TV commercial in support of its Red Kettle Campaign.  The commercial shows a family being rescued from a flooded house – makes you wonder where FEMA is – […]

The man was raw-boned, sleek, could skate like the wind that blew out of Canada on days like these around the corner of Appleton and Summer Streets, near cliff faces where the Montreal Tunnel holds forth. His hair was dark, his eyes held stories recessed and reserved, but he wore a magnificent pair of hockey […]

Saturday. The sky unpeels itself like an artichoke, revealing a layer of hidden blue. Birds, taut as origami, slow to watch it flood over the tops of apartment blocks and church steeples. Cars laden with their human cargo ignore the sight and press on to their destinations. Pistons thrash against the darkness of their existence, […]

To the barista with a Liberal Arts degree who makes my coffee You are not smarter than your customers. Going back to school (unless it’s for law) will not solve your problems. Don’t quit your job. Times are tough. Why do you ask me if I need room for cream each time when you know […]

The IDS had broken down. Many of us didn’t know which way to turn or how to tell someone else we didn’t know. In our homes the water runs constantly. Our eyes cloud. We put our best men on building a new system. Some say they will never be through, that information has become that […]

Amelia hated her name for 15 years.  She wanted to be a Kim or a Laura or a Katie.  She went by Amy.  There are five sophomores named Amy.  The second week of school, she told people to call her Amelia.  I  couldn’t call her that.  She stopped talking to me.  I wrote her a […]

Mom always purchased the leftover comics at the end of the month from Woodard’s Drug. I was in love with too many of them to pick a favorite. I’d read anything. I wanted to look like Dazzler with her blonde hair and roller skates or at least I thought I could be Betty with her tomboyish charm. […]

There are no monsters in the world, but there are definitely things that can hurt and maybe even kill you. Worse than a bee sting, or even that dog that got hit by a car. Like tornadoes. Tornadoes aren’t really monsters, but they can kill you. They can throw cars around like toys and drive […]

The Granite Run Mall lives in God’s mouth. God chews and new stores fall from his lips. Crumbs form kiosks that sell cologne, perfume and watches with Paris Hilton’s face. When God sleeps, the mall does too. It sleeps alone, but has pleasant dreams, knows God will awaken and be peckish— a new tweeners clothing […]

The workings of his mind is a mystery — how he turns complex global takeover strategies into blunders, like America when she gets that missionary itch. And so what if that spazzy, beetle- headed doofus — with his nonsensical interjections — works my nerves like oscillating violin strings; that he’s got the intellect of a […]

Every morning, the same ritual. You dust both photographs. Turn Billy’s face up again for another day while the coffee brews. You look at Billy, then at Elvis. Outside the sun is coming up. You never give up. Not you. Yes, it has been eighteen years since Billy walked out the door. That door. And […]

This isn’t a Where’s George story. Not exactly. Still, it’s hard to locate a dollar, especially in the check out seven or less aisle when some kind of wiry, tobacco-stained guy jiggles and flips his wheel of keys. This is a competition to see how quickly one can process with less. She is one less. […]

On Dec. 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman fired five hollow-point bullets at John Lennon in the hallway entrance to the Dakota. The gun was a Charter Arms .38 special revolver. The bullets inflicted severe gunshot wounds, causing aortic dissection. The doorman, Miguel Gomez, reportedly wrestled the gun from Chapman’s hands and kicked it across the […]

When we were in high school my friends and I used to fuck with each other by calling each other ‘Jerry.’ Guy friends these were. With us, ‘Jerry’ became a count noun, applied most often in this way: You’re a Jerry. Don’t be a fucking Jerry. From all sides the response was laughter. The principal […]