Dear Dad,

I trust this finds you, Mother, Don, Gillian, and Ann as fit as you looked at the seaside last week. From the news this week, I fear it was the last of our family holidays together for some time. Lucky we got it in before Germany signed up with Russia. Now, we can only hope the German people can persuade Hitler not to go to war. [Read more...]

Cal and I got stuck on Route 9 surrounded by fields of corn, stalks barely three feet tall, New Jersey’s pluckable yellowed-ears still months away. Cal’s Plymouth, his radiator, steamed up, so he cell-phoned for help, but after forty minutes it was obvious nobody was coming to get us. [Read more...]

It rained through the night and early morning, tearing the petals from the lilies in the garden. They lay on the ground like pieces of satin tinged with rust. The sky looked bruised, as if it had more crying to do. Anita stood in the kitchen looking out at the day through the screen of the back door. The thin lines of mesh made everything appear slightly out of focus. [Read more...]

I want to eat in the kind of Chinese food restaurant you find in small northern Ontario towns. Restaurants with names like “Lucky Moon” or “Sun Palace” or whatever. I want the red sauce on chicken balls and a fork, no option of chopsticks, that kind of place. [Read more...]

“My teeth,” Frances said. “They fall out of my mouth when I speak. They’re falling and I keep spitting them out like they’re cherry pits, but no one says anything about it. You were there once, and you ignored it, but I think you kicked a tooth away when it landed too close to your foot. You were barefoot. [Read more...]

I was walking downtown with my lady, it was midday, we had a few drinks in us by that time, and as we were crossing the street, birds chirping and engines revving, this asshole in a black Firebird, overly excited to make a right turn, almost takes off both of our fucking ankles. [Read more...]