In December 2013, Brooklyn Nets Assistant Coach Lawrence Frank was "reassigned" by first year... more

I went to the Antiques Roadshow with my mother’s green marble frog in the inside pocket of the jacket of the black suit I wore to her funeral that morning. I had taken the frog from her house. I wanted to know what it was worth. 

Last year, we ran a series of "Commercial Fiction"s by Dave Housley, which were collected into a book. One such piece in the series... more

Somebody has replaced my chair with a child. It was a beautiful chair. A rocking chair fashioned by my father.

It makes no... more

My girlfriend moved out. She gave me back the lease the next day. “I’m not sorry,” she said, but she agreed to... more

My sister once saw Meryl Streep naked in a public shower. It was back around 1980 and they were somewhere near Virginia Beach. Meryl Streep... more

It was a freely made decision, a public vote, so I suppose one could argue that when I confronted my roommate and started an argument-- in... more

Every summer my father and I would make the drive to the ghost town of Lundy near the Nevada border to fish the lake there.... more

You are driving home from a place that makes its own beer, where it seemed wrong to order just a few because this is a small business and... more

It was a difficult job for the man who painted night.  First off, he always stained his clothes.  An occupational hazard,... more

Leo and I are dicking around in his room after school when I pull this big cardboard box out of the closet.

—What is this? I... more

Mom. Dad. Where have you been? Everyone else is already here. You missed the first prelim bout. I'll catch... more

In December 2013, Brooklyn Nets Assistant Coach Lawrence Frank was "reassigned" by first year Head... more

Sometime during the last two hours, Clark Griswold has stopped feeling cold.

He claws at the frozen ground, vaguely aware... more

Across the street, I see a large, jolly-looking man with a white beard and white hair leaving the house of our friends, David and Shelby. The man is wearing camouflage – the jacket, hat and hip waders of a duck hunter.

At nearly two in the morning, in the room across the hall from where his wife slept, Geoff Devine was awake, gazing down at the above ground pool in the backyard. Though he couldn’t see it, he knew that within the giant wooden drum, the murky water reflected the light of the moon. 

When I was fourteen my mother moved into an apartment across town with my principal, Mr. Lorenzo, who was rumored to keep a pistol strapped... more

In jest you call for your horse, but there is no horse. It’s a bright lettuce-green morning, birds piping overhead. You are on foot, and follow the derelict tracks out of town past the Shell Station.  You step off the road and onto a furry plain of high golden weeds and yellow dross. This is strange. 

It only glows if I believe in God. Of course, the Fat Man doesn’t know that. Once an hour he comes into the barn waving his short black... more

Lyle worked the night shift in a millwork factory, manning a machine nicknamed the Pincher.  Everyone hated the Pincher.  On the day shift they kept going through operators.  Before Lyle, the longest anyone else had lasted on the Pincher was two years.  At least that was how the story went.  Lyle hated the Pincher too, but he’d learned to live with it.  He’d been there nine years and would be there another nine if they let him.  By then he’d have enough saved up for a nice house, one with stairs and a workbench and actual carpeting. 

100k

He said that he got a letter from a used car dealership that said that he either won 100k or a grill. He said he knew it... more

Two queens walk out of a bar and light a cigarette, me and Lucy Littlefist. Lucy says this. She says, “In a relationship,” she traces quotation marks in the air around the word, “one of you always loves the other more.” And she’s right. She secures her wig with another bobby pin, pulls at her sequined dress. 

“Everything I touch,” he said, twirling his fork in a plate of linguini, “turns to mold.” 

There was once a time when my aunt and uncle had room enough to take us the odd weekends our parents were on vacation. Their house was smaller than ours and I felt haughty in it. The walls were dark and the air smelled musty. In the afternoons dust poured in the air like cigarette smoke in an old black and white movie. Going out into the sun was blinding. 

Hanging panties like cat skin, or Books of Dead and leaving in nighties. The jambs are so low. Lights on high are... more