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The kitten, a pot-bellied calico with rickety legs, couldn’t have been more than four weeks old. It was the only one to detach itself from the litter and waddle toward me. I was kneeling on the uneven stony surface outside the rusty metal fence enclosing a cluster of low mound-like graves. The litter evidently claimed…

I was eleven when Scooter’s people moved next door. Scooter’s father, Butch, was a plumber and a cowboy, volunteering with the sheriff’s mounted posse unit. Linda was Scooter’s stay-at-home mother, looking after a pregnant springer spaniel. Krista and Thomas were Scooter’s teenage siblings. I was too young for their company. Four years old, Scooter was…

When I went out, I looked around to see who was wearing a mask. Not many people had their face covered; most were cavalier about risk. I pulled on my mask and swung onto my bicycle saddle. The bike rolled smoothly, and the cloth covering didn’t bother me; I could almost forget about the face…

I. I’m parked outside Trader Joe’s so you’re getting my shopping list because I only ever manage to have paper OR pen in the truck; never both at the same time. So here goes: onions, coffee creamer, frozen dumplings, low-acid coffee, Unexpected Cheddar. What am I missing? Did you use firm tofu or extra-firm in…

Gone eight hours, counted Zelma, her watch in one hand and the other on her back. She could wait for Ray no longer. Truth be told, she’d been feeling poorly since yesterday. Now, it was time to go. The hot, round belly rolled her off their rusty trundle bed. She rested on her hands and…

All manner of critters lurk in the Enchanted Valley, bobcats and coyotes, bear and beaver, slugs and hornets, and Ken feels like a lurker too, a confused critter sluggishly wandering-standing in front of the chalet with Maggie, his devoted girlfriend of eight years sitting on a downed tree behind him, dressing the hotspots on her…

Ice Wage   subzero air, and the set was fixed like concrete until I came to chop it loose because of the breakage, how many must have starved that winter,              frozen in low wages, loose whatever you do, never attempt to mix colors on your paper. you may drop,…

I scream and you touch me. I scream, and you touch me. You smudge my glass face with the oiled edge of your thumb, and I whisper what I know about the Australian bushfires. I whisper pictures of protestors circling the US embassy in Iraq, and you gawk at me, drowsily, as if we have…