Abbreviated and enormous, hand-held and vast, portable and rooted—the short prose piece seemingly cannot exist in nature. The form is essential because of this particular magic, this …

       One morning the workmen digging the new lime kiln found a set of five iron keys. The keys were black, heavy, with curious ridges half worn down. Instead of tossing them onto the debris, …

       Nora managed to scrape together enough for a joint from her mom’s stash. Her mom kept it hidden under her bed on a silver tray, which, in better times, displayed a tea set. The tray’s …

       I have been a carousel man for thirty-three years. I work the “B&D Carousell” on Coney Island—one of the originals manufactured by William F. Mangels—which my father operated …

 Dream of Flight         No flight experience, yet he is required by necessity to fly, the fourth nightmare for a blind man awaiting a sustained form of lift in the darkness, a form he can …

She sold exotic vegetables and fruit. In a ritzy L. A. office, she took phone orders from hundreds of grocery stores in Florida and Key West. She was enamored of her boss, the woman who had actually …

       I am wearing my  Don’t Leave Me  t-shirt to my blind date. We have 250 of them. Red background. Black writing, in big block letters across the front. Mel and I came up with the idea …

Pain. It is finally, totally, completely about pain. They want to hurt you. That is all they want. Listen to me. They will give you and your friends thirty minutes. They will give you an hour to …