Fiction
On the Mountain
The older Girl Scouts kick out the screens of their bunkhouse at night and wander the open fields at the back part of the ranch. They often walk down the dirt road my cabin is on to get to the … Continue reading
Neshoba
Cal said come to the Neshoba County Fair, so Virginia is here, bathed in the garish light of the midway. The night air is thick with the rancid meat smell of too much warm breath, too many unwashed bodies packed … Continue reading
To Will One Thing
On the night Will felt the floating sensation, he attended a performance of the Ugandan Boys Choir. The boys were trash scavengers, rescued by a Good Samaritan and taught to harmonize, who performed every night across California to raise donations … Continue reading
Self Portrait as a Trailer Full of Mules
[Selected by Wiglaff magazine as one of the best 50 short short stories published in 2011.] Where do they find these animals? The halt and the lame, the half-blind, the parboiled, the skeptical showered in the alkaloid mud of a … Continue reading
Some Bore Gifts
Juan Julio could describe the misfortune with a soft clarity, so that the impression he left upon the listener was that of a tune hummed from a porch step, during the long liquid hours of the first, floating dark. That … Continue reading
Facsimile in Boots
Facsimile in Boots There she is. A paper doll of me. The dress, the lilt, the self-hatred. The crowd thins and swells in want of a scene. Conversations begin, pretend, then halt. My gin and tonic sweats into my hand … Continue reading
The Open World
The Open World by Ann Tashi Slater The long summer twilight filters through the leaves of the birch trees in the front yard, throws lacy patterns on the yellow walls of the bedroom. In a jar next to my bed, … Continue reading