My neighbor says flooding would prove less problematic if trucks would stop sending waves through his doorway. Omaha Steaks have overtaken my mailbox. The bank sold my mortgage to a company called Mr. Cooper. Previous homeowners elevated my house eleven inches, and the crawlspace is littered with hand-sawed struts, concrete shims, cracked four-by-fours, rusted cans of Raid. →
“On the Nextdoor App”
The Bridport Prize Anthology 2023
I bought a four-band puzzle ring from a shop beneath the Al Asad stadium. The proprietor asked if I was sure the ring was all I wanted or if I might also be interested in a designer suit, fabric straight from the factory, a fraction of retail, custom fit. I told him I was not absolutely sure about anything except that a custom suit would not fit for long. →
“FPO AE”
Sweet
Mac sat his grandfather at a table beneath a massive royal palm while we debated dessert options. Landscape lights shined halfway up the trunk, leaving the fronds as dark as the sky above the strip mall. →
“Old Man Shadow”
X-R-A-Y
“Off Krome”
Passages North
(Neutrino Short-Short Prize finalist)
My quasi-boyfriend was having a great time mocking me in front of his friends, so I made my own way back through the graffiti labyrinth—what everyone called the Krome insane asylum but what was actually a government missile launch site abandoned at the tail end of the Cold War. →
Auntie was cutting vegetables like they weren’t even there, asking why I was worried about who would ride the Ferris Wheel with whom when these girls out here—hacking the back end of a butcher knife through the side of a sweet onion—were always wearing some too-tight torn-up see-through something over popped-up nipples like it’s cool to be cold. →
“College Boy and the County Fair”
Lost Balloon
(Best Microfiction 2024)
M was rounding the corner of Briny and Fifth, speeding to catch the end of Sunday mass, westbound and wondering where she went wrong, rehashing the reasons she couldn’t afford a car for her stepdaughter’s sixteenth. →
“Between Breakfast and Lunch”
Southern Indiana Review
For seventeen convoys, in the helpless passenger seat behind layered glass and the streaming world, he said nothing when things went antic. He said nothing when their truck fell behind and out of radio range. He said nothing when the turret gunner’s faulty headspace caused the fifty to jam during small arms fire. →
“Laurel and Patina”
AGNI
“Available in Standard Sizes”
Baltimore Review
(Best Microfiction 2023)
They press to your chest a half-jacket—just the part of the dress uniform that the camera needs to convince your friends and family of your newfound commitment to country—the front. You stand in line with the unphotographed. →
“Seven Weeks or About the Size of a Coffee Bean”
River Teeth
The morning is here again. My fiancée and I have taken to acknowledging the miracle of recurrence. The water is hot again. The towel is dry again. The mirror is us again. →
I’m about to be sick on the front porch. Granddad is at the back, beating his cane against the screen door to scare the Muscovy ducks. The neighbors understand—nobody wants duck mess on the walkway. →
“Fifty-five and Older”
X-R-A-Y
“Steel beneath Your Chin”
The Cincinnati Review
(Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist)
You let it grow too long, so you might have expected Staff Sergeant to pull you aside after the convoy, this being the third time he had gone out of his way to address the length of your hair, but I bet you never expected him to snag a fistful the way he did when you turned your back and sucked your teeth… →
“33062”
O, Miami Poetry Festival — Zip Ode
Our Lighthouse keeps
boats from sinking.
What will boats do when our
lighthouse sinks?
“The Sound of Nerves Strummed”
Epiphany
The morning sun had not yet crept through the blinds, and I felt what I could not see: sand ferried by overnight air through door seams and window seals, sand collected on wall lockers, lampshades, and nightstands, sand thrown like a rug across the floor. A small problem for another time. →
“The Subtropics”
Flash Frontier
The subtropics need—first from the ground. Sand spurs hobble barefoot boys, cripple their gait, their pinch. Iron droplets down coral tongues. High knees through the empty lot. →
“Models of Recognition”
Chicago Quarterly Review
While resupplying a platoon camped upon what seemed the barren-most swath of desert in northwestern Iraq, I experienced the psychological phenomenon known as pareidolia—the mistaking of random stimuli for a more familiar pattern—lunar geography, say, for a rabbit. →
“To Deaden the Nerve”
American Short Fiction
Marines sit on the ground with their feet in their hands, their bare knees against the wet morning grass to stretch their groins, to loosen their limbs, to gather themselves near the flight line behind company headquarters. They await the arrival of their instructor, the start of their next round of martial arts training. →
“Sloth, That Wicked Siren”
Bellevue Literary Review
Why he stopped showering, no one could say for sure, though everyone had their guesses. Most assumed it was a matter of convenience, which evolved into laziness, and then absentminded comfort. Showers, the somewhat infrequent occasions that they were, became difficult to appreciate in the dark, wrapped in cold, wading waist-deep through lack-of-sleep, the length of the day dragging the body down with more weight than the collected grime of the road. →
“Natural as a Sigh”
Prime Number Magazine
It is difficult for you, when they call it a theater of operations or, more dramatically, a theater of war, to see yourself as more than a player. These orders are your stage directions, and this base and that town and the roads between and the trucks that carry you along, your stage. Places, everyone. →
“You Receive a Certificate of Commendation”
Consequence Magazine
For outstanding achievement in the performance of your duties while serving as your platoon’s quality control non-commissioned officer during transport and combat logistics operations in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. You spend your deployment money on a sixty-eight Thunderbird, vinyl interior, pearl white with a navy top, chrome bumpers that reflect the world. →
“Down from Sinjar”
Image
Orders said haul our happy platoon up the Sinjar Mountains, and, at the convoy brief, Lieutenant told us this is what we had trained for—honest—when we had been running routes outside the wire for months. If where we were headed was what we had trained for, we couldn’t help but wonder what was supposed to have prepared us for where we had been, for the operations and orders we carried out in those places. →
“A Couple Sit on the Beach and Think”
Hotel Amerika
Benjamin's helpless if he can’t lean on humor. Weather, an excuse to retreat indoors. A bricklayer cuts through the breeze. People withstand so much to be near the ocean, to be with one another. No one needs the door held. This wood rots at night, moisture and salt, the air. Cracks in the halogen morning. An entire industry paid to design and build outdoor furniture. →
“The Cleaners”
The Southampton Review
A burst of cloth over shoulder where pants and shirts and rotten skivvies pushed sweat and powdered earth down his back. He waited in the fluorescent cool of a doublewide laundry trailer. Three weeks’ mess in a mesh bag. Washers and dryers beat staccato behind a counter, their cords jigging other cords, extensions and power strips chained as electric daisies. →
“Touching”
The Southampton Review
Across the desert, marines are touching themselves. This is happening. One is slouched against the rear wall of a guard post at the north-facing perimeter of a forward operating base unbuttoning his trousers to air out his barrel, to clear out his bore before his partner returns with a box of hot, cockblocking chow. →
“Field Protective Mask”
SmokeLong Quarterly
There is a public restroom in the Dadeland mall which smells so much like the inside of the M40 field protective mask that he stops to check his right side as the door swings closed. →
“Indigent Disposition”
North American Review
(Best American Essays 2017)
If your body dies in Broward County, Florida, and nobody claims your body as the body of their next-of-kin, your body will be burned and disposed of by the Broward County Indigent Cremation and Disposition Program. The Broward County Indigent Cremation and Disposition Program will tend to your body’s final disposition in accordance with the law. →
Views, Reviews, and Interviews
SmokeLong Quarterly
Flash from the Past: “One Degree of Safety” by Andrew Gretes →
American Literary Review
Grackles: Red Rocket
The Paris Review
Staff Picks: 02/12/21 • 02/19/21 • 02/26/21 • 03/05/21 • 03/12/21 • 03/19/21 • 03/26/21 • 04/02/21 • 04/09/21 • 04/16/21 • 04/23/21 • 04/30/21 • 05/07/21 • 05/14/21 • 05/21/21 • 06/04/21 • 06/11/21 • 06/25/21 • 07/02/21 • 07/09/21 • 07/16/21
In the Gaps: An Interview with Keith Ridgway →
A Jackpot in the Archive →
Game, Set, Match: Tennis in the Archive →
Ring around the Archive →
Vestal Review
Company K: WWI in Flash →
North American Review
Fences and Fax Machines →
SmokeLong Quarterly
Smoke and Mirrors →
The MFA at FAU
Tom Sleigh Workshop Series →