The other week my brother and sister, who are a year apart in age, and both younger than me, attended a high school reunion. I can’t believe what year reunion it was because I still think of my siblings as teenagers, even though age wise, …
They walked past those houses whose lots are so small the yards are mostly cars: whose tenants keep their tiny lawns with ancient blades exhibiting their age in the protesting swirls of clippings, in chipping-off paint.
While she prayed, Christa heard organ music - the sound of a hundred unrelated sounds forcibly coupled together. Behind shut eyelids she registered white blurry hums from the altar candles.
And on the fifth day the artist knelt down and wrapped his arms around the wild beast, bringing it to the surface of his neck and chest.
The walls of his living room began closing in. Old feelings returned and gripped his heart in its fist. Standing abruptly, he grabbed his keys and cigarettes and slammed the door on his way out of the house.
Kelly Cherry is the author of nineteen books of fiction -- both novels and collections of stories -- poetry, memoir, essay, and criticism. Cherry's short fiction has been reprinted in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South, and has won three PEN/Syndicated Fiction Awards.
My finger drifts along the books’ spines. I insist on being casual, skimming through hundreds of alphabetized names and titles as though they were one relentless, underwhelming sentence.
My dog leaps from seat to seat, window to window, shaken by something so much larger than herself, by the wind’s thrust against her jowls.
“Look! Up on the shelf!” “It’s a game!” “It’s a Ouija board!” “No, it’s a poetry chapbook!”