Working toward sainthood this summer solved some of my problems. For one, my daily-Mass-going mother got off my back about getting a job and moving out permanently. Plus, it gave her something to brag
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Short Fiction
Short Fiction
Knitting for Leo
My mother taught me to knit.
Back then, knitting was a necessity, not some artisan craft like it is today. She would get patterns from women's magazines and cheap wool from the market. She ... [+]
Back then, knitting was a necessity, not some artisan craft like it is today. She would get patterns from women's magazines and cheap wool from the market. She ... [+]
Short Fiction
For Seven Years
Each morning his face flushed as he remembered the boy's words, "I want that shovel. It's just like yours." And each morning he fell to his knees, extended his arms, then plunged his hands into the
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Short Fiction
Sins and Secrets
He had earned the stamp of "loser" in his father-in-law's eyes. Worse, he was less a man to his wife Jean. When a possum tried to move in a few months after they purchased their little two-bedroom
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Short Fiction
Blue Glass Dog
After I left Tom, I rented a house next to a cemetery. My mother offered to help me move. Standing in the gravel lot where I parked my car, she regarded the one-story clapboard partially hidden in
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Short Fiction
My Friend Matty
My friend Matty believed he could fly. "I have the cape and everything," he told me one afternoon. We were playing knights and dragons in his backyard when he pointed to the roof.
"You want to ... [+]
"You want to ... [+]
Short Fiction
The Girl Who Liked Cats
Harold Gates slowed the snow-topped yellow taxi and edged it along the slushy curb to a stop where she stood, shivering in a tattered wool coat in a January blizzard on the steps of her unlit
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Short Fiction
Solomon's Lines
Fred tiptoed into his room and slid into his desk chair, casting a worried glance over his shoulder as he opened his laptop. Typing as quietly as he could, he logged onto Artium Obscurorum and
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Short Fiction
The Night Library
I heard it before I saw it, a jingling of bells like the soundtrack to a corny Christmas movie. Then out of the mist rolled a small carriage, round and bright as a converted pumpkin. Florescent
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Short Fiction
Glacial Motion
August brought with it a new easy-swallow scheme by a new self-improvement mentor. Luna Rojas had measured out her life with the likes of them – detoxes, spiritual awakenings, fad diets. She craved
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Short Fiction
Disappearing Acts
When she left, Anita took Mom's valise, the round one with the wooden handle from Eaton's department store. Mom was furious. She'd had it on hold at the store for weeks while she earned enough to
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Short Fiction
Bargaining
I remember when my world divided into male and female, when the girls screamed "Shaun has cooties!" across the playground and flushed with what I thought was anger. I remember being in a closet with
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Short Fiction
A Happy Color
Jake lay in the darkness, the sun creeping under the shade...thinking why should he get out of bed. He had no place to go, no one to see and nobody would be coming to visit. He probably wouldn't
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Short Fiction
Inheritance
Joan feels remorse for having hated her toes most of her life. She inherited them from her grandmother, who had hated them too. Her grandmother had cried at the swimming pool on Joan's 11th birthday
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Short Fiction
Out of Reach
He was reaching for the top shelf then stopped. He moved his eyes to the next, lower shelf down and chose a jar. His hair was sheet white and his body frame resembled my father, tall and heavy set
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