This is an old story, told before but in different form. It was called a funny story once, because it had jokes in it, and funny pictures. Whether it is indeed a funny story will have to be decided again by each person who reads …
A man with a shovel opened the screen door. He walked in the path of light from the door for fifteen steps before he handed the guy standing at the edge of the mowed field the plastic bag. Their shadows went deep into the dark …
I got in the tub around 9:00 or so this morning, before I was properly awake. I sat there in the tepid water in perfect silence until I could no longer stand to look at my body magnified through the overcast bathwater. For a bit, …
Trudy wants gifts. Her father buys her two souvenirs at the Traveland off Highway 10 in Jackson, Mississippi. A cute miniature ink well and a wall plaque with the protruding head of a Mississippi mule. Trudy starts to bawl when she sees these gifts. Trudy …
A man stood before a group of people. It was his party. He knew each person on the couch, the ones crossed-legged on the rope-rug, the others leaning against the walls near the framed black and white photos and the thumb-tacked poster prints. He even …
The whole thing falls apart after we talk for about an hour. He’s told me about the plane, which he’s early for, to his hometown Seattle. And he’s told me about wrestling. The last time he lost was more than three years ago, and now …
I alight. My baseball cap placed on the seat cushion, though not before a brisk shake to avoid as much as humanly possible a rim-wide ring of wet where I am to eventually deposit myself into sitting position and face her once again. Here she …
Lawrence flung away the issue of Businessworld with a theatrical gesture of nonchalance onto the table of Conference Room One. “So the world is on the brink of a recession, and oil prices are lower than ever because, inter alia, demand from Asia is down. …
An excerpt from her new novel, "Kleopatra" by Karen Essex
For a while I was staying in a converted tenement east of Silver Lake that smelled like maple syrup. Upstairs, directly above my unit, there was a textile shop that operated twenty-four hours a day. I would hear machinery at all hours and the workers …