Glimmer Train Stories, #79

Excerpts:

Terrence Cheng
The Merchant
All familiar faces, part of a community that worked and lived and fought and struggled together, some behind open doors, some behind closed. Many from the same clans back in Guangdong, so that even here in New York there was a sense of home, of living a familiar life while still dreaming a new one.

Vauhini Vara
We'll Rise Above the Sky
"I sometimes think if Dad and I had split up earlier, Priya wouldn't have gotten sick," she says. "What do you think?" "That's not true," I say. "Nothing is related. People just invent causes and effects where they don't exist. Things just happen."

Adam Theron-Lee Rensch
A Day in the Life
John can only think of Sean, waiting at home. He needs to get back to see him, to not be the type of father who isn't near when his child falls asleep.

Rawi Hage
Interview by Jeremiah Chamberlin
To capture the real, transform it into a believable fiction, is a bizarre process. Blurred. The delusion in my writing is just accentuated to a form of overt madness and the exploration of madness. Violence is a form of madness; so is the poetic and the creative.

Selena Anderson
Here Come the Brides
But in what my father called a real moment of lunacy, he married my mother and became someone's husband again. There were four moments of that, four wives altogether.

John Stazinski
Bangor
At thirteen some boys give up church. But we were never a church family. Instead I gave up these weekend trips to see my felon father. Both are ways of rebelling, but also, I suppose, ways of seeing sleight of hand where magic once was.

Amy S. Gottfried
Chim, Chiminy
Even the older kids seemed to have jam all over their hands. Not that he was sorry about any of them. He just never planned on spending the bulk of his adult life walking around with a soggy sponge in his fist.

Sam Ruddick
Flight
He scrutinized my face for a second, then leaned back, smiled, and shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't think you have the first idea what you're up against. In fact, I'm one-hundred-percent certain that there is no way you could possibly know what's in store for you."

Michael Schiavone
Wackers
While fresh omelets sound nice, chickens are for farmers. Besides, I'm a dog person; at least I was until Barney passed last May. The guys at the VFW always pester me about getting a puppy, but I can't imagine playing fetch with a stranger.

Gabriel Brownstein
Kiss Him Goodnight
He would come inside the kitchen window, call an ambulance, and then dry off. And before the ambulance came, he would write Lila Diamond a letter. He would tell her about this night, about all the foolish things he had done while trying to get to Brooklyn to kiss her.

Diane Chang
The Teacher and the Revolution
Teng felt as if a pound of his own flesh had been carved out of him; waves of loss opened up in him, an ocean of loss.