Fiction

When he kisses me, my heart flutters in my chest like swarming bees.

The tomatoes weren’t there. She looked again at the ground.

After nearly a year of dating, I never stopped thinking of that other boy.

What’s a man supposed to do when his best friend is a falcon?

Never issue a dare to a dead person. They’ve got all the time in the world.

If mine, then, is a religious Offence, leave it to religious Punishments.

They’d been together an hour, but they were an easy threesome.

She often feels something kinetic between herself and younger men.

“As your brother, I ask you, how did you get that scar on your face?”

There would be no one to live for; she would live for herself.

“The secret to happiness is not wanting,” Lars told the Buddha.

He was warm that way, always tender, and maybe that’s the worst part.

He glowered even as a little child. Maybe because he has your bad eyes.

He was trying to seduce me with his history, which was mine as well.

Her bra is black, her breasts full and white. There is too much flesh.

For a month after 9/11 Bella wept through all her appointments.

Like New York City, the factory was circumscribed but infinite.

Take this man, Stepan. His deep mellow voice soars in my heart.

The people flocked to witness the execution of Ja’afar and his kinsmen.

He will be unable to resist his manias for symmetry and completion.

At a red light he touches his cheek. The stubbly skin is sensitive, febrile.

I found myself alone on the train in possession only of Knoll’s journal.

No parent has yet been born who can save a child from childhood.

“I—I am Martin Eden,” Martin began. (“And I want my five dollars.")

We were young and lived wild lives in the delightful city of our sojourn.

Her sentiments maudlin, malaise dripped like a fever from her pores.

Gary Sturm

The three of us share a myth, that I’m fragile as old bones. My parents speak in low voices—about me, I’m pretty sure. I watch the waitress, trying to remember how to flirt. I take off my mask.

He pushed aside a photograph of a man with a knife stuck in his eye.

He cut down on beer and moved into the hotel that had my name.