Riders by Pete Stevens
My wife wants to know what my new job is, the title, so I tell her what the woman at dispatch told me, that I’m a nonemergency medical driver, which means I’m there when the situation isn’t dire, when…
Tag: Characterization
And a Single Day by Randy William Santiago
We shall leave, for remembrance, one rusty iron heart. The city’s rusty heart, that holds both the hustler and the square. Takes them both and holds them there. For keeps and a single day. —Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on…
We Drowned by Leigh Camacho Rourks
PROLOGUE: RANA Rana cannot speak. She’s eight years old, but Rana is incapable of yelling out to her sister that a smell—a smell not quite like gasoline spilling from the undercarriage of a rusted out four-wheeler, a smell darker…
My Father Takes Me to the Rodeo by Francine Witte
And that’s when I know what I want to be. Not the cowboy, flailing all spaghetti in the afternoon sun. But the horse bucking and shaking that small man off his back. My father was out of work again.…
some things I knew by age seven by Shaina Phenix
In every story we are precocious, fast, little mothers, little women living in questionable child bodies. Men stalk the straps of our training bras sliding off our shoulders. Our mothers scold us for getting ruined or dirty—always reminding us of…
Babushka by Kristen Loesch
The television gives off a low hum, like a bumblebee. Buzz. Buzz. I make the sound too, hoping she will turn away from the screen, but tonight my granddaughter is entranced by the grainy sight of hundreds, thousands of…
Flesh and Blood Ideas in J.M. Coetzee’s ELIZABETH COSTELLO
By Maggie Kast • When I’ve given a character my own thoughts on a subject close to my heart, I’ve heard critiques of my writing like, “Sounds authorial,” or, “Your character wouldn’t say that—those are your ideas.” Explication by…