The Cake
The night before being arrested and sent to the prison from which he’ll never emerge, the playwright David Gronfein has a long and bitter...
NEW WRITING ON JUSTICE
Search
And Fancy Free
By the third time my brother was arrested, we were experts at posting bail. I was up late reading David Copperfield again and answered...
I Would Draw Those Birds
if my eyes were better then again they fly so fast to the feeders before swooping off can’t draw that fast even if I were a gifted artist...
Windstorm
Neighbor Jack in the middle of surgery Doctor stopped said must reschedule Jack going blind surgery urgent No school today Spokane...
The Curse of Two Last Names
The sun along the Mediterranean coast doesn’t reach this far. Hasn’t for some time possibly never has, what are the chances? A complete...
Cause World
A girl with braided pigtails and fake freckles shouted, “Load up the chickens,” so Magdalene and I stepped into the cage and sat on the...
Tonight Show
George W. Bush is staring at the dust particles swirling in the bright studio lights. He is wearing a navy blue suit and red patterned...
Gibbous Reflection
Astronauts treaded your dusty surface And swore the ragged rocks beneath their boots And the grimy particles on their space suits Were by...
Tattoo
My son, a tattoo artist, wants to do one, but since my heart attack (aspirin, Plavix), he’ll text me a new design, but won’t ask, because...
Lucius Calpurnius Piso to Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso His Brother
Though the Heavens fall, I’ll read the gleaming shards And speak the spirits’ sanction from their gleaming, As all things are foretold in...
I Keep These Secrets for Ephraim O’Connor
Mr. Jarvis wore sweatshirts like us, not the button-ups and ties of the other teachers, and if a kid said something funny, he would...
MANA
Puko’o was a disaster. The project was an eyesore with its sand and coral hills, stacks of diesel cans, and lava mounds from ancient...
Cut Meat Road
West of Rosebud community, the tribal seat of Rosebud Reservation, a narrow asphalt-surfaced road dips and turns sharply for two or three...
Dissolution
how you ran the pitch fork into the cow’s flank, then broke like a rotten nut. The cow heard you; the gap between hearing and listening...
Medea Above the Sea
After the tempest, when she rode on the dragon, she saw the choppy glittering water below and the rainbow. Above the human miseries,...
Laundry: Home of the Good Shepherd
It’s Friday night. Yasmin’s just cranked song one. The knock is so forceful that I’m more shocked to find my tiny neighbor at the door...
The Flight of Mary Todd Lincoln
Miah was an actor, not an actress. I didn’t recall asking what she was or wasn’t, or for how long we’d been talking. I’d been too busy...
Bayani
Do not begrudge me my burial at Libingan ng mga Bayani. It was my dying wish, even though this fiction has been manufactured by my family...