Glimmer Train Stories, #74

Literary short stories by established and emerging writers

Excerpts:

Karen Outen
Inside the Universe of His Parents
Unless he came to know that, unless he came to that new shore just beyond him, that place where he might understand the two of them, then the rest of the world would never make sense. He would never find anchor.

Michael Schiavone
Ghost Pain
We met last summer, the two of us partnering up for The Monkey's Fist Bluefish Tournament. He told me he'd make a good teammate because of his insomnia. "I can fish all night and that's when the big bastards show up," he'd said.

Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Monkeys of the Sea
Connor had given up meat at age fourteen after seven summers of 4-H heartbreak. His first love had been an American Yorkshire sow named Tina.

Eric Scot Tryon
A Handful of Ones
"You know," my father continues once they've left, "your mother and I have lived our lives. We've done things. We're okay with how things are now."

Maggie Shipstead
Via Serenidad
She was the type of teenager who moved from childhood to adulthood with the minimum of blooming, looking essentially the same, only older.

Juan Martinez
Well Tended
The summer's been too long, too full of afternoons where one judge show rolls after the other. I've watched them all. The one with the man holding a bat. The one where Kato Kaelin's the bailiff. The one where the judge always cries.

Clark E. Knowles
Boxville, East Boxville
There are two sets of sterling earring studs in the package, and Betty begs her mother to let her get her ears pierced. Ellen grabs her daughter's earlobes one by one, squeezes them like she might a fruit to see if the ears are ripe enough for holes.

Xu Xi
Interview by Anne de Marcken
I think my sense of place derives from a lack of a national identity. Hong Kong is a unique political and historical accident that, for better or worse, is what I'm stuck with as the reality of my origins, and is my major cultural influence.

Paul Michel
Not the King of Prussia
He used to look out of it as he dressed for work, listening to Marta in the kitchen below, smelling the good smells of coffee and bacon, watching herons and cormorants and even eagles, right here in the city, hunting their breakfasts in the still green waters.

Elizabeth Koch
Would You and Other Relevant Questions
Outside, she stood in front of a tree with colored Christmas lights. Snow stuck to her lashes so the lights blurred and swirled like tie-dyed fabric, like swatches of clothing flung from many floors above.

Michael Poore
The Beekeeper
After an hour of zigzagging through desert broom it was a miracle they didn't run afoul of the Border Patrol the Mexican screamed, "Alto!" An old woman lay curled up amidst the remains of a camp. A few plastic bags full of clothes, some energy bars, a sack of nuts and raisins. She was dead.