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Fathersexpand_moreWater the boxed dirt, and up she’ll push, rising in red-streaked blossoms.
My father made me watch softball on ESPN 2 to help me stay alive.
In carved hearts—the artery, link that links but won’t spell it out.
Even before bills and rent and adultery—you don’t sleep well.
The first time I met you I fought your father in the driveway.
One door teaches to read for meaning and pleasure. Another shuts.
He was gentle and slow, like a blind man washing dishes.
I dream of snakes coming out of me and through the house to find her.
she was sixteen, and swimming. she was seventy-one, and soft.
Their mother was the real beauty of the family, or so everyone said.
When I say I’ve seen a man die, what I mean is many and always.
I tried mightily, but no longer could I ladle those ancient words into the air.
Sleepy and pensive, July succumbed to the day’s isolating heat.
He doesn’t notice the cop car rolling slow-motion into the station.
Please, Theresa thought, as a tenderness surged within herself.
Keely finally stops crying when they step outside. The shock of cold.
I wouldn’t sleep a second, knowing the catastrophe I’d set in motion.
I opened my eyes and they burned; I closed them and saw my father.
Why does she do it? She knows cutting yourself is a joke. Goth, idiotic.
Everything doesn’t have to mean something, he once said. Now that he’s a father, I want to read him the thing I’m writing about fathers.
I wanted from my father what I had never wanted or sought: his advice.
Abandon the idea that arts and sciences are mutually exclusive.
You can get anyone to sleep with you—if you want it bad enough.
Our lives are often shaped by small, seemingly trivial choices.
My father stood up, unable to choose which one of us to kill first.
I looked out at the busy world, and I saw nothing but its ugly bones.
She has wings of rouge on her cheekbones, her beak blood red.
When his father was out cold he tied him up, roping his arms to his sides.
The author reads her story, a finalist in the Winter 2013 Story Contest.
At first my dad was optimistic that he could be a one-armed farmer.
