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Guilt
Posted on February 4, 2016 Leave a Comment
His mother decided to name him Joseph, since their last name was Klein, and it seemed droll enough to her that he should spend his life being called Joseph K. She expected he would be surrounded by other Josephs in his life – which, in fact, he was – and, thus, be distinguished from them […]
Boots
Posted on January 22, 2016 2 Comments
The cool thing about the internet is that you can look up stuff like, “What day of the week was January 19, 1978?” It was a Thursday. On Thursday, January 19, 1978 (a school night), I slept over my best friend Lia’s house. The only reason this had been allowed was that a snowstorm was […]
I Want My Weather Channel
Posted on January 21, 2016 Leave a Comment
Does anyone else in the NYC area miss the Weather Channel with a profound unhappiness, or is it just me? It’s awful enough we have to weather this potential snowstorm (yes, I went there) minus El Bloombito’s crack Spanish admonitions, which I’ve only recently – begrudgingly, barely, really – accepted. His absence in the circus […]
The Wet Spot
Posted on January 19, 2016 Leave a Comment
On a dark, desert highway. No…just kidding. On a dark, living room carpet, a cool spot at my feet, the warm realization arose that I had stepped on a pretty decent-sized spot of German shepherd urine. Danced, that is. Or something akin to danced, but probably more like non-rhythmic jumping. Whatever it was, my foot […]
Ride
Posted on January 18, 2016 Leave a Comment
Often, distracted, she almost hit the gas instead of the brakes. While first learning to drive, her stomach would drop in that infinitesimal moment during which she had to decide. Brakes or gas. Brakes or gas. Thankfully, though, she had always chosen correctly – later laughing with her mom as she pulled into the closest […]
Los Mangles Rojos
Posted on December 16, 2014 Leave a Comment
1. There was a truck, back opened and piled with soiled towels, idling on the narrow stamped cement path. A sour smell of dampness, sweat, and burgeoning mildew – not only the physical truck – impeded his grumbling scooter. It was the same every evening around this time. Thoughtless day laborers, hired to collect the […]
A Dog for Christmas
Posted on December 12, 2014 Leave a Comment
What she remembered distinctly about the fire was the air. That it was embedded with caustic molecules, invisibly smoldering just underneath her nostrils. How that air had shocked her lungs with each breath. And the dog, of course; she remembered the dog. The charred heaps of garbage, the cluttered debris, the murky bits of interior […]
Libera me
Posted on December 5, 2014 Leave a Comment
Late November peppers the sky with cirrus clouds, blackened underneath, and suggestive of cold rain. Rain which may fall sometime soon – but not today – then, presently, a screeching-halt sunset descends, assaults, roads curving into evening, lined with empty see-through buildings illumined by the practiced forlorn of nightfall. How it skulks along the edges […]
The Village
Posted on October 23, 2014 Leave a Comment
I. There was only a sliver of sunlight remaining in the middle courtyard – really just a sword of uneven brightness across my legs, outspread on the broken concrete. Too tired to get up, but knowing it would soon be dark, I let myself be distracted by the old woman who’d moved in last week […]
The Hair Tie
Posted on October 13, 2014 Leave a Comment
One – If it had snapped – the way those cheaply-made hair ties usually do, in that weak spot where they are joined together – it would have rested as a thin, black ‘S’ in the cracked pavement. It didn’t, though. It slid out of her lanky, slippery hair, bounced off her tote bag, and […]
A Girl by the Bridge 
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