Short Fiction
Centering the ancestors
Edible Parts
Stories
“When they cut my Granddaddy from the branch that had choked him, it groaned like the eye of a storm before cracking and splitting in two. Days later, Mamanda made Uncle Dan cut the whole thing down. There was nothing they could do about the stump, so my uncle—compliant, but always clever—merged his imagination with his pain. Like a penitent burning offerings before an altar, he left his aggressions there; day after increasingly uncertain day, driving his axe into the fleshy wood to split one log, then another, and another; all of it sacrificed for the nobler, greater good … to build, to burn, and to temper the throb of his considerable anger and grief.”
- From “Crenepo”
Novel
Erotic City … an oblation to home
Keeper of Forgotten Things
Novel In Progress
I skated across an icy LaSalle to an air raid of disapproving horns, passed beneath the red and white bullseye that marked the entrance to the parking garage and pushed against the wind until I reached the corner— which I rounded hard, squatting low and in left wing formation—like Zach Parise bearing down on a goal. I didn’t know a whole lot about hockey, but I’d been to a game once. Snuck in with this chick named Marit whose brothers used to cook meth out of a barn down near Faribault. She had a big ass for a white girl. Most a’ these Minnesota farm girls did. We kicked it all last summer and into the fall, until the barn burned down during a BCA raid on her family’s homestead. Somebody dropped a dime on them brothers. One got killed in the shootout. They sent the other one to Stillwater. Twenty to life. Not exactly sure whatever happened to the girl, she of the soft lips and crooked lower left incisor. Last time I saw her, we shared a bottle of Wild Turkey in the back of a rusted-out van parked down the street from the MIA. After that, we spent hours wandering through an exhibit of vintage Kimonos and replicas of ancient Tea Houses. Drunk, warm, and free. She’d dropped off the grid before, so I didn’t think too much about it. A couple weeks went by before I realized she was gone gone.