GRABSKI

Winter. You are eighty-four: I call you a bastard but long after your gentle side had disappeared, owing to two decades of vodka. Now you sit, surrounded by pillows and stare through the only window that matters. That single pane that faces the bird feeder, empty and swinging alone. It’s the only sign of life […]

  The first ray of sunlight struck the cowbell that hung from the longhorn’s neck as she meandered through the dust, calf at her flank with Jake Moon astride a sorrel horse not far behind. Moon was a thin-made man with gunmetal eyes and a beard that rimmed his jaw like a wreath of wire. […]

It had been two days since the sea took Solomon. Two days since the tangle of rope unleashed its tentacles, snatched his ankle, and jerked him face down across the deck as froth washed over his back. The mast sheared off clean, crashed to the floor, and then plunged into the water. The rope, belayed […]

In the living room doorway stood Petunia Jennings, a heavyset, beady-eyed woman with a shotgun cradled in the crook of her arm. She was dressed in a chartreuse nightgown and her head, rather round and small, was adorned with a matching sleeping cap. Gray curls sprung from under the cap that, together with the gun, […]

The second of March was as cold and windy as any winter day on record in west Texas, and Jesse knew that if the wind blew any harder or the snow drifted any deeper that the old horse’s lungs would burst and their blood would freeze hard in their veins. Tears ran down the side […]

Upstairs in the old farmhouse, Adam Katz, a boy of thirteen, kicked at the sheets that covered his bed. He often slept like a stone, but on that night he could have been a ghost, like ether, slipping between waking and dreams. Perhaps it was due to the moonlight that poured through the curtains, which […]

The year 1927 ushered in the greatest flood on record in Mississippi—a year that 12-year-old Avery would look back on as the year that most shaped his life. But it was the year leading up to the flood that was hardest on him, beginning with six months of retribution, owing to his attempt to run […]

Emanuel released the breath from his lungs, pressed his back against the flat wall, the brass button of his denim jacket scraping the polished granite behind him. He turned his neck, flattened his stubbled cheek to the cool, gray stone and inhaled smoothly as he sidled along the tower’s ledge. A pigeon, baffled to see […]

(First published in the December 2015 issue of Cyclamens and Swords Magazine)   Looking back, I wish Katz would have come clean when he had the chance. Explained why he roamed about like he did. A loner, following fence-lines and dirt roads for no apparent reason. He walked forward chin first and bent at the […]

The metallic echo of hailstones rang from the empty tin bucket that stood by the steps leading into their clay adobe on the afternoon of Friday, October 25th, 1918. Alonso stood shivering over the morning paper now ten days old that Doc Toyo had spread out flat across the kitchen table – his index finger […]

“I am Omphalos, your leader, sprung from the rib of Sisyphus.” Published Oct 2015 by 101 Word Story. Read it here: http://www.101words.org/labor-2412-a-d/  

My name is Loretta. I belong to the Onion Head. I call him the Onion Head because his appearance is that of a fresh picked onion hanging upside down – his round yellow head the bulbous onion and its hollow green stem his wrinkled coveralls. His pant legs chafe and swish as he robotically makes […]

The instant the spotted stallion blew through his nostrils behind me, I felt his presence as if he were an oncoming train. I did not turn. I did not heed his warning but rather I waited, for a lasting second before the weight of a thousand railroad ties crashed against my spine. The horse stood […]

Winter 1812. You lay shackled, imprisoned in the belly of an English Man O’ War. You hear and feel the thunderous pounding of temporal waves explode against the wooden bow as the ship holds true, bound for Dartmoor, a prison made famous by the Hounds of Baskervilles. And now, dark and adrift through a timeless […]

(First Published by Cyclamens & Swords Magazine, April/May 2015) Tilt Jackson preferred the straight-truck over a horse trailer any day of the week. He was a third generation trader that scoured the far corners of West Virginia buying and selling back then. A straight-truck could run up and down hills where big rigs and trailers […]