In eighth grade, Leann’s California brother blank-check, birthday-gifted her a whole new wardrobe, accessories included. I tried not to hate her. Tried not to worry whether anyone saw my Thursday jeans were Allthedays’, my sweater winnowed from Glad bag cast-offs, my wrists braceleted with scabs. They healed up mostly clear, except just there. See? One …
Before Everyone discovered Someone’s bones, Someone stored their faces in a box in a drawer in the middle of their dresser and, mornings when they awoke, tried on each in turn, discarding each facsimile as smallish or loose or lacking in some necessary, elusive detail heard about but never seen (like unicorns or potted gold), …
Silenced. Wrote. Can’t shut up now. *****
A grizzled, gap-toothed man asks to break a twenty for his bill. I keep all m’fives, he tells the waitress. The man at the counter laughs. I like keeping all my money, too. Naw, the fives. He holds a bill aloft. The ones with E. When I was little and loud, my favorite word was, …
Once upon a time… A good little girl waits patiently for her fairy godmother to return the voice her father stole then buried, unmarked, in the woods surrounding their condo. In this version, they forget about her and she dies. Or, They remember her, but they sell her voice and keep the money. Then she …
I’m happy to announce my micro-flash piece “In Which, Magic” is featured in the latest issue of The Mighty Line. You can read it here: https://indd.adobe.com/view/2c3361a6-a324-4aa0-8c6d-b15af9f98984 I hope you like it!
Every September, I have to memorize new rosters, create new seating charts, and manage the needs of dozens of new students. This year, I’m sharing a different kind of roster–a roll call of former teachers who helped me learn not only the kind of teacher but the kind of human being I strive to be. …
A wooden plaque containing the final two lines of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” hangs beside my desk at work. It is one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets. However, “The Road” is one of those poems that readers can get remarkably wrong, erroneously interpreting the final stanza (and therefore …
To give a thing a name, a label, a handle; to rescue it from anonymity, to pluck it out of the Place of Namelessness, in short to identify it—well, that’s a way of bringing the said thing into being. — Iff to Haroun in Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories This is the …
My Name was Supposed to be Elizabeth Ann 