You’ve been sent on an assignment to ascertain the perfect cocktail pairing for a Rice Krispie Treat. You’ve been to too many of these places already but what’s one more? You repeat your now banal-seeming request: “I’ll have the house Rice Krispie Treat and whatever cocktail pairing you usually recommend.” This particular bartender opens with […]
You’re standing in the kitchen of the home you once owned in Barre. It’s a stunningly banal scene: you and A. unpacking bags of groceries, chatting about meal plans and minor home improvement projects with your parents who have just arrived after a five hour drive. One of these improvements would be to the kitchen, […]
For the past two weeks, you have been at a creative writing retreat at your alma mater, St. Mary’s College of Maryland. The time spent was very productive. New stories written. Old ones revised. New friends made. Old connections reunited. But the time has come to depart. As you close your first suitcase and return […]
A friend (J.P.) and his son (O.) are pulling a bread dough out of a machine and shaping it. Periodically, one of them will duck over to an enormous, wood-fired, brick oven and stoke it. When you inquire about what they were doing, J.P. explains that he spent the last year on a sabbatical, learning […]
You’ve moved into a new house. You hate moving. (Does anyone enjoy it?) All the packing and unpacking. Rearranging furniture, and knowing it will be rearranged again in another month. Discovering the million little flaws that you hadn’t when you first toured the place, or had it inspected. But here you are, having again moved […]
You wander into the a gym. It’s sparsely populated, but not empty. No one is looking specifically at you, but some of them look up, sidelong. From a distance each piece of equipment looks familiar. Weightlifting machines and treadmills. But as you get closer, they take on bizarre shapes. Not impossible shapes, but peculiar, unconventional. […]
You’re sitting at a table in a semi-crowded gym. You’re catching up with a friend (A.M.) during a kind of reunion or party hosted there. A tall figure approaches and looms over you, standing behind your friend. In one arm is a baby girl, and in the other is an open box of Scrabble. He […]
You’ve lured them (that Prince, his army) to the edge of the forest. Until now you’ve hurled only insults, taunts. You duck into the woods. They linger on the edge, the soldiers wary. The incensed Prince urges them onward, enraged, outraged. Another jibe escapes your lips, stinging that Prince beyond his capacity for tolerance. Livid, […]
You and President Obama are the judges on a Chopped-style burger competition. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are the finalists. They’re doing at it hard over the grills. When time is called and they bring forth the burgers, both of them have produced monstrosities. Rubio is oddly disparaging of his own effort, praising Cruz’s burger […]
The town is flooded. But not in nature-is-vicious New Orleans during Katrina sort of way; more like a permanent war-of-attrition city of Venice sort of way. But you load them into your gondola, your bottles. Gently you bring them down out of the closet, and gently you remove them from their boxes, and gently you […]