fiction.

JULY 2022
”shed this skin” // fractured literary
flash fiction

Tonight, I make my return to the water. The weather is warm, the moon full, the time right again to take stock of all I’ve removed and dropped into the deep black lake behind my home.

I wrote and sunk the first message a decade ago, now. Recorded my confession on paper, rolled it scroll-like, slid it down the throat of an empty glass Coke bottle, reattached the crimped red cap with noxious globs of superglue. The thick curved glass magnified and distorted the tight coil of my secret—

nomination: pushcart prize

JUNE 2022
“departures” // lost balloon magazine
flash fiction

The TSA line in Orlando snakes through mazed partitions, people tacking onto the back of the line in droves. That’s where we need to be, but Aubrey won’t abandon her Mickey Mouse balloon. On a bench in the atrium I suggest, ask, beg. But: No, Mama! Cheeks scarlet despite sunscreen globbed on hourly all three days we tromped around the most magical place on earth, Florida sun searing the near translucence she inherited from her father. Father I brought us here to learn how to live without after he made it clear he’s gone gone.

APRIL 2019
”grin & shimmy” // paper darts
short story

People get an ass-backwards impression when I say I’m a backup singer at a karaoke bar in Orlando. What they think: bleak, drab, desperate. What it is: karaoke writ large. It’s a full band with a repertoire hundreds of songs long—White Snake to Whitney Houston, Adele to Aerosmith. It’s a black-painted stage looming above the audience, computer-controlled lighting and fog machines, wall of booming speakers, two floors of table seating with tea candle centerpieces and leather-bound cocktail menus.

It’s a simulated spectacle of a place, right outside the gates of Universal, among a town’s worth of themed bars and restaurants and shops. Every inch oversized and gaudy. So, exactly what you expect from evening entertainment when you’ve hauled your family down to this fantasy land for a week of packaged vacation. Not that I’m against it—I’ve always kind of adored the gimmick of it all, the plastic sheen.

DECEMBER 2018
”count the ways” // hypertrophic literary (also in print)
short story

Sadie had written bring a swimsuit for the hot tub! on our invitations, and right then was the time she wanted to get in, so I pulled my one-piece from my backpack, but Sadie said oh no no no, you can borrow a bikini, and she dug through an entire dresser drawer full of them, grabbed a hot pink one and said, you’ll look so cute in this.

I blurted out that my mother won’t let me wear a bikini yet.

Sadie said aw you poor thing, said my mom doesn’t give a shit, said at least you can live it up for one night.

And then we were down on the back deck all dropping our towels to climb into the bleachy bubbling water, me with my body down in Sadie’s bikini.

JUNE 2017
"slather" // cheap pop
flash fiction

Billie bought her first tube of eye cream at twenty-two. Too young? Well, maybe. But when your botoxed,microdermabraded, laser-resurfaced mother slips you that slow scrutinizing look of hers, lets it slide down the length of her poreless nose, tries to squint but can’t and finally says, Ooh honey you might wanna start using a good eye cream—how do you stop the subsequent spiral? 

If you’re Billie, you don’t. You ride that spiral right down into the dark, baby girl. You research ingredients and procedures into the night, fingertips pressed to marred face, cellphone screen aglow. That’s what Billie’s done, year after year.

nominations: pushcart prize + best small fictions

JUNE 2017
"serpentine" // still: the journal
short story

I’m getting worked up again feeling that snaky rustle in my ears that electricity down in the roots of my teeth and the jangling rhythm of my poor old heart so I press my palms together like a prayer braid my fingers press until my arms shake and quiver and Susan’s saying something but I can’t hear her over the roar of that serpent crashing through brown dried leaves and pine straw just writhing around and raring back fangs dripping and finally I hear something over the din and it’s Susan saying Momma Momma shhh and she’s got a hand on my arm not moving just placed there so gentle and I snap out of it and say I’m sorry baby that one came on quick and hard.

nomination: best of the net

SEPTEMBER 2016
"the garage" // apt magazine
flash fiction

Bunch of boys, bunch of dark-haired boys running around summers shirtless and shoeless on the asphalt driveway hopping on and off bikes and Big Wheels, grey dust pressed always into the swirled prints of their little feet. You can see the color when they run. The mom probably does scrub them down every night but it doesn’t budge, that ground-in asphalt grime. They’ve got a couple of battery Jeeps, the kid kind, but only two and there’s the four boys. So two get to drive, two sit passenger, then passengers get antsy, start trying to hurl themselves head-first out of moving vehicles or stay in and punch their drivers. Then tears come and then the ridicule of tears. So they abandon those Jeeps for something less hostile. Races in the grass. Basketball bounced and swished into a hoop bolted to the garage.

JULY 2014
"sakura" // north carolina literary review (print)
short story

These days Kuromon market is where I go to retreat. I ride the subway and I step into the light at the Nipponbashi station. I linger at the vegetable stands, my fingertips tracing the contours of white daikon, bright slick eggplants, lumpy kabocha squash with their secret orange insides, brilliant red tomatoes in blue bowls. I am a silent part of the crowd moving beneath the market’s stained-glass roof and I pass young girls with streaky hair huddled around the shops that sell handbags made of kimono silk. I stop at the teashop and drink my tea slowly before I walk home. I desire no short subway ride on my way back. 

honorable mention: 2013 doris betts fiction prize
nomination: pushcart prize