Ascending the Mountain
published in New Orleans Review : 34.2
Well, I can see you’re surprised. I can’t blame you. I’ve returned from the mountain carrying nothing, looking probably about the same as before. But my arrival can’t be entirely unexpected. In fairness, you were standing there in the foyer, a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, waiting, it seemed, when I opened the door. Did you hear the key in the lock? No? That’s fine. So you were waiting. Thank you.
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Omaha, Nebraska
published in Fugue : 32
It’s math, almost. People say my brother is in Omaha, Nebraska, and so the twenty-eight dollars and thirty-four cents, and the ticket, and the fat blue submarine of a Greyhound bus, and a seat, and these people.
One has her things in a red bag she slept on while she waited for the bus to come to the station, and now she’s sleeping on it again.
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The Shelby Parade
published in The Madison Review : 2009
THE PARADE. The Shelby Parade, which, when it began many years ago, consisted of a few meager floats, the youth baseball team, the mayor perched uneasily atop a borrowed tractor, has grown to such tremendous proportions that only a few weeks after the end of last year’s parade we already line the streets, our hands clenched nervously behind our backs and wait for the Shelby Parade to begin.
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The Amazing Drowning Woman
published in The Milan Review : 1
The amazing drowning woman says she’s learned a new trick. Over the last several weeks she has borrowed the horse diver’s platform, which, when fully constructed, reaches a height of sixty-one feet. From the platform the drowning woman leaps, executing several somersaults and twists in the air, ending her trick with a flawlessly postured dive into the same pool used in the horse diver’s act.
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Murray, Swimming
published in Sou’wester : 36.1
When Murray was a senior in high school, he was twenty. I was seventeen and a grade behind him. It had taken me my whole life to be seventeen, and twenty seemed an age where anything could happen. I’d look at Murray and think spectacular things were coming. He seemed ready at any moment to lift off the ground and start flying. I wouldn’t have been surprised.
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