Short Stories and Essays
Your baby is the size of…
a short story forthcoming from the Southern Review
…We try to remember when it was that we’d first heard of plastics appearing in a uterus out West. Six months ago? Twelve? Since then, rumors have wormed through hospitals across the country. It was Mariam who purchased the tabloids with their grainy photographs of plastic fingers, earlobes, toes. She stacked them on the table in the break room. We couldn’t distinguish between what had been doctored and what was real.
History of the Handshake
a lyric essay forthcoming from Fourth Genre
Popular wisdom suggests that I offer my hand to you to prove that I am not carrying a weapon. If we were not shaking hands, we could be bearing arms. And yet in the early days of the pandemic, the handshake itself came to be seen as a weapon: a carrier of the virus whose movements and proclivities we did not yet understand. This is why, when Dr. Eric touched my husband’s hand, I noticed.
What are the renters doing now?
a flash essay published in the North American Review
Are they toasting marshmallows around our fire pit? Have they burned through all the wood we hauled and split and stacked so beautifully last year? If they are lounging on the cracked slate patio, reclining in the Adirondack chairs that my parents carted all the way to Minneapolis, are they admiring the monarchs wafting through my prairie garden? Are their children running roughshod through the goldenrod, stampeding through the blazing star, the little bluestem, the black-eyed Susan?
Fata Morgana
a short story published in Salamander
Nominated for: the Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and the O. Henry Prize
He’s spent months reading about Antarctic expeditions, Antarctic animals, Antarctic terrain. But now that he’s faced with snow as thick as whipped cream, with mountains of ice that blind him when the sun shines the wrong way, he sees that he isn’t prepared for this at all. He has the gear, yes; he outfitted himself from the same equipment list—boots, parkas, thermal underwear, hats, gloves, shades—that he shared with his clients. But he hadn’t accounted for the long, rippling blue shadows. The haunting silhouettes of leviathans beneath the ice. The brilliant, otherworldly expanse. The sense that he has been, immediately and unequivocally, diminished.
Émile Benveniste
a piece of flash fiction published in Epiphany
But we cannot say this, here, now, on his tiny balcony, with the violet whisper of pigeon wings drifting from the shadows of the gray slate shingles. Before we arrived, our words were simply pennies in our palms. Now, standing before our silent professor, we clutch our syllables in our hands like hard, clear jewels. We do not want to show them off. We fear to let them go.
There Is Nobody Here But Us
a short story published in AGNI
Emmeline slushes across the lawn, counting geese as they come skidding down onto the water. My mother hums over tomato seedlings that she’s planted in a set of empty yogurt cups. In the living room, my father strokes the quiescent cat. Head to tail. Head to tail. Head to tail. I rest my fingertips on my laptop keys and strain to hear the thunder of her purr. There is nothing to do now but wait.
At the Mercy Meal
a flash essay published in the Bellevue Literary Review
The servers clear plates of hummus and tabbouleh while your Aunt Edna clutches her memories of Kathy in gnarled hands. (Four years ago, it was Kathy who pushed back her chair in this very restaurant and thanked the assembly for their memories of her mother.) The cold November light pools in the parking lot and glimmers silver through the windows. We flew one thousand miles last night, landed in the smallest, darkest morning hours, and then spent the day swaying on our feet while the condolences rolled over us in waves.
Baikal
a short story published in the New England Review and awarded a Pushcart Prize
What was she thinking?
That depends. When she stepped onto the tarmac in Irkutsk, the sky crisp and glittering, she was wondering why it had taken her so long to come to Siberia. But earlier, when she boarded the stale plane in Beijing, she was trying not to think about the world’s first marathoner. (You know: the one who died.) And when her husband dropped her at the airport curb in Minneapolis, she was wondering if he’d miss her.
Read an author interview here and read the whole piece here.
Teaching Mrs. Dalloway
an essay published in the Southern Review
Beth said she would buy the alcohol herself. For the rest of us had our work cut out for us. The floor needed to be swiffered; our valuables had to be tucked away into our socks. The boys from across the quad were coming. But then, we thought, what a night we would have—as sparkling and flirty as our cocktails. What a lark! What a plunge!
The Endling
a short story published in Ploughshares
On the morning of my third day I carried my coffee to the hammock that swung outside my cabin. I listened to the warm wind ruffling the tops of broccoli-shaped trees. I waited for the little blue-and-white boat that I’d hired while the mist began to lift, unveiling the rise and fall of islands, sleeping giants in the distance. I’d grown up in Brooklyn and moved with Livy to Long Island for the elbow room. So I’d never felt the way I did on the edge of those craggy lava beaches, no other human visible for miles—no taxi cabs, no honking horns, no trash collectors, no trains rattling underfoot. This was like Emerson, Thoreau, I remember thinking. It was like the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains all roiled up together. It was the opening shot of a Western, all sky and possibility.
Hibernation
a short story published in The Cincinnati Review
finalist for the Robert and Adele Schiff Award for Fiction; nominated for a Pushcart Prize
Our train broke down in the frozen heart of the taiga. At first, we were startled. We had grown accustomed to the relentless presence of the engine, to the way that it throbbed beneath our toes and thrummed through our veins. When we tried to rise, we stumbled, and then tried again. How strange it was to find that now, after thousands of miles and more, our world was standing still.