The man across the table glared at Howard Collins and said, “Hey, I pay your salary, dude. You have no right to hold out on me. You know damn well I’m allergic to Tramadol. I need Percocet. I’m in pain! Can’t you see that?” Howard considered the irony. He had spent several years and $140,000 […]
For every single mother working three jobs. . . . Read More »
It had been pouring rain all morning at Windansea Beach on the San Diego coastline. Cynthia Perez stood under a thatched hut of desiccating King Palm fronds that stood just twenty yards from the water near a group of smooth, caramel-colored rock formations. Perfect A-frame waves broke there all day long, converging into one sharp
For those who weren’t writing back in the nineteen eighties, it’s hard to imagine what a broad shadow Raymond Carver cast across the writing world. His work, and articles about him, seemed to appear everywhere, including The Paris Review, Atlantic, Poetry, and The New Yorker. In his final year, 1988, he was inducted into the
Raymond Carver, Remembered Read More »
Having a child was the most beautiful experience of my life. But it seems they are never satisfied. For example, Arnulfo. When they found that I was going to have a child, right away they assumed that I would marry the father. “Linda,” they said. “Have you thought how Arnulfo and you can live? What
God Wanted Arnulfo to Marry Me Read More »
Wes was nearly done writing a long letter he had been working on for two days. He put the pen to his lips and listened to the wind blow outside. Another cold and lonely Christmas had come and gone, but working on the letter gave him special purpose. He lived in a small storage shed
Ian’s brain had weak connections between the neurons that shaped thought. He never felt empathy or sympathy for anyone, no matter how badly that person suffered. He tortured the family cat when he was a little boy just to test his own indifference to pain. This didn’t bother him at all. It didn’t help that