July 1, 2018
The Newlyweds
The girl’s mother said the man would make a woman out of her. Three nights before the wedding she said, “Listen, I want to tell you something.” There was a […]
May 1, 2018
Aguacero
I remember the sky had been dark since morning, as if protesting the start of another day. Rain held off till afternoon, then started heavy: long, gray water shards dropping […]
May 1, 2018
The Minister
Easter is less than a week away and I’m making notes for my sermon as I wait and wait at the Hy-Vee deli counter for my lunch order. It’s just […]
March 1, 2018
Chickens, 2019
Just before Smith, that turncoat of an Agricultural Extension agent, showed up on my farm with the rest of them, Jerry and I stuffed my chickens into wax-covered produce boxes […]
March 1, 2018
Parade of Homes
The real estate agent in Iowa didn’t farm, her husband didn’t, and she was only passingly knowledgeable. She’d had the place listed for three months. The owners were growing soybeans […]
March 1, 2018
Dirt Man
Midnight and Dirt Man is singing again. He’s been at it every night for weeks. Lately he’s on a Beatles kick, can do all the parts in “Love Me Do,” […]
January 1, 2018
Wing
Jinnah decided to build the wings when Anis lost his job in San Francisco. She had lived three decades in America, and yet she had never realized just how far […]
January 1, 2018
Them Captives, Them Heartbroke
Sometimes one of us would drag a foot over a submerged tree limb, and the rest of us would stop in our tracks, thinking it was a dead man. Deacon […]
January 1, 2018
Wax
Kid believed, though he was no longer a child, that elephants made new elephants from the earth beneath them, dampening it with water sucked in through the trunk and then […]
January 1, 2018
Listen
우리가 만났을 때 나는 외로웠다. When we met, I was lonely. It was my first year in this country and my first year in conservatory. Each night I slept in […]
January 1, 2018
Lionel, for Worse
2017 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest Winner Lionel finally decided he’d like to be cremated at the end of things, so I said we’d better practice scattering his ashes, […]
January 1, 2018
When Do We Worry
2017 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest Runner-up When my wife was still my wife, a wisp of smoke from the Altadena fire drifted up and over the foothills of […]