Glimmer Train Stories, #78

Stephanie Soileau
Cheniere Caminada
Under one marker, etched with only a year, 1893, were some from almost every clan, Curoles and Terrebonnes and Comeauxs and Ledets the founding families who had settled this ragged fractal of wetland all tossed together in a pit by exhausted survivors who then gathered what little was left and moved on, farther up the bayou, farther from the sea.

David Rothman
Guided by Voices
He wondered what these guys who dressed so formally at dawn were all about. But this was how Marina saw the world, always with suspicious eyes. Boris wouldn't take the cynical path. Maybe they were just nice fellows, like so many others he had met in Upstate New York America.

Adam Theron-Lee Rensch
Everything in Its Right Place
"I had this dream," he said. "I was on David Letterman, a guest show about widowers and how they coped with the grief of losing their wives," and he kept talking, a smile on his face like he was recalling a pleasant memory.

Lynn Ahrens
Rendition
But she had not heard from Khalid in five months, ever since he'd left to visit his cousin Asghar in Toronto. His absence was a shadow that followed her everywhere, dragging at her as she walked, the not-knowing a stone around her neck.

Gina Ochsner
Break
Of all the men, Kalle was Avis's favorite. He made her job easier, first rolling to the left of the bed while she tucked the upper- and lower-right corners, then rolling to the other side of the bed so that she could secure the left corners. They repeated this dance for the flat sheet, a series of choreographed moves perfected over fifteen years of practice.

Alyson Foster
Heart Attack Watch
The back of the sublet that Maggie and I moved into after our sophomore year faced a road favored by ambulances.

D M Gordon
The Work of Hunters Is Another Thing
The folks he grew up with were heading off to Florida, their farms growing houses, their river fields filling with willow.

Yuvi Zalkow
God and Buses
"Yes," I say to my wife, "but you converted because of me. You can't leave me and take my religion. Get your own."

Cary Holladay
The Flood
Uncle Bern raised his end of the table so plates, food, and cutlery slid off in a long, splattering clatter. Gid tasted cinnamon, then blood, as a dish of pear butter cut his lip. Mourners twisted away from the crashing table.

Christopher Coake
Interview by Andrew Scott
Beginning writers have an aversion to specificity they think that if they're going to make a big statement, to write something timeless and universal, they need to be vague.