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The Long Consequence

There in front of the house was his son’s ratty old Thunderbird.

The Looking Glass

The Lost Screenplay

Our camera pans along the porch, and we see each praying woman.

The Lucky Bastard

It was on a mid-June morning that the stranger first called.

The Magic Piano

Chocolate promises a happy ending. I believed in that promise.

The Making of a Writer

Write simple sentences. Report. Don’t moralize. No pretensions.

The Man and the Snake

The eyes looked into his own with a meaning, a malign significance.

The Man Arguing in the Kitchen

Five dark shapes loped after the car. Dogs—as far as the eye could see.

The Mark on the Wall

How shocking it was to discover these real things were not real.

The Mattress Wars

Marriage changes passion. Suddenly you’re in bed with
a relative.

The Mentally Ill Are Not Alone

“He’s a mad dog on a chain. You don’t stick your fingers in his mouth.”

The Misses Moses

Miss Moses smiled, I could take you, buster. Don’t try anything with me.

The Orchid Casket and Other Poems

I forgot to detail that the jumper leapt from beside the hanging Monet.

The Palace of Illusions

I managed to talk sensible Alice into a little pink outfit and high heels.

The Paperboy

Just before four in the morning, the dog barks, the headlights appear.

The Pattern of the Scatter

She is eight years old and doesn’t recognize the word divorce.

The Perfect Couple

It had been four weeks and five days since she confronted him.

The Phone Rings

On her sixty-second birthday Marge Olson got a call, not a gift.

The Photographs of Your Life

I saw it on her face that day, a look like her heart would drift into the sky.

The Pizza in New Jersey

He’ll probably try to get her in the sack, just to stay in practice.

The Profundities and Other Poems

Stop her there, on the bank of knowingness, just before spring.

The Psychic’s House

Meghan Dunn

The Reader in Quarantine

She could not remember what Past and Present stood for.

The Red Studebaker

If your father were here, he wouldn’t put up with your insolence.

The Return

He resumed his nightly practice of writing without being able to see.

The Rock

She had a situation where she’d lost her driver’s license for speeding.

The Saltcutter’s Wife

The pain lithified to numbness, and she recalled the time of his courtship.

The Saturday Morning Institute of Human Survival

The first time the world demanded more of me, I was twenty-nine.

The Sentimentality of William Tavener

It takes a strong woman to make any sort of success in the West.

The Session

Joanie’s face was something she’d borrowed from Miró, from Picasso.