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Bite-Sized Stories
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Cover art: “Dad’s Oar” by Helen Gwyn Jones
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Storytelling // Poetry
“Whatever your opinion, know that
I could make up stories–
long, sweet, colorful stories–
about all of these things…
whatever I said would be true…
because that is the nature of this place.”
The Coming of Whales // Fiction
“This is a story of a village by the sea. The shopkeepers in the village smile when they say ‘Good morning!’ and the children of the village play long after sundown on the village square. The people of the village are fit and happy. They tend their gardens and they dance at celebrations. And if someone is ever in need, everyone lends a helping hand. It is that kind of village. But it has not always been that way.”
Oceanside // Fiction
“It sounded like swords. Like bees in a meadow. Like a city humming at night. Horse hooves on sand. Sneakers slapping against the road. A dragon snapping her jaws. Sailors lost at sea… And tomorrow, when we were home, we knew the story that we would tell our children.
Moebius Strip // Fiction
“I know, too, that legends invariably grow in the telling. Was he really as bad as all that? When I think about it, I do have some good memories of the time before we left him, as well as bad ones. Like the time I got given one of those books for boys you used to get, full of illustrated stories. It included a page full of magic tricks. One of them, called the magic loop, looked easy to do and captured my imagination.”
Displaced Person // CNF
“My childhood included…a kitchen cupboard offering a choice between Wonder Bread, French bread, whole wheat, and sourdough… As I stood there, I tried to imagine the red crosses painted on the roofs, the sirens screaming, the hunger, the want, the trauma. If there was something to absorb, it would be… a young Serbian boy heading out early in the morning, ready to stand in line for as long as it takes to get loaf of bread for his mother.”
Language isn’t what matters // Poetry
“My grandfather, the second son of an Alpine contadino,
used to scythe grass with his sister on the slopes
of Monte Saccarello for hay. To look down from there
to the chasm of the tiny valley makes my head reel.”
between a drowning man // Poetry
“between a drowning man and my child’s skinny dipping
between lip and kiss…
between the fibreglass fishing rod and the spinning lure
between old Capague and Montulet…
by the old gods of rumour
all the bridges are falling down”
Legacy // Poetry
“Afterlife is a matter of things left behind,
a few photographs passed down and stored in a box…
Sometimes, I think of sending trinkets
and treasures to everyone I know.”
Multiverse Ars Poetica // Poetry
“This lake / has been here forever, but moves / high Sierras to northern Minnesota… Nothing / is happening. It isn’t / an event. There is no / special moment. Like a polaroid… one Tuesday in 1979.”
Reverse Migration // Poetry
“Scientists say they are moved
by the changing of the light…
that guides them up the rivers,
through snow squalls,
past lightning…
my daughter guides her daughters
through the cobbled streets…
chatter nursery songs…
I cannot understand, lost
words reclaimed.”
Elderberry Wine and Jack Daniels // CNF
“Dad came out of the house and squatted on the top step. The brothers said they’d paid their priest to pray Marie out of purgatory and into Heaven but were afraid the priest’s prayers had been insufficient. They wondered if Dad would help pray her into Heaven. The brothers brought a fifth of Jack Daniels and a couple six-packs of cold beer to help with the praying. Dad agreed… Our bookcase held an old, dog-eared Bible and a Koran, but my father was not a praying man as far as I knew. Still, there he sat in the hot sun, passing the bottle of Jack and praying.”
To a Father, Never Known // Poetry
“Why did you flee your task / the one for which you were anointed. / Couldn’t you see our home laid ruin / consumed by its own wrath, nothing / to heed, no voice to which to turn… All you left were the words of others / a momentary Moses.”
An Old Friend // Fiction
“Another planet, another job, it’s becoming a blur. I see the city as we slowly descend onto a flashing landing pad. A rambling sprawl of ramshackle houses bake under the waning sun, its fading rays of light cast an orangish hue over the city amidst an endless desert. ‘Music is the only thing that calms him, he has nightmares often… I work in the trash processor in the desert, it is harsh but it helps me forget.’ On a table, a butterfly soars around fruitlessly in an overturned glass vase… I have a vision, that I quit, that I work on a cargo ship that soars around the galaxy. I have friends, maybe even a family, one day when I retire I’ll sit on the beach and watch the waves crash ceaselessly into the sand.”
Daphne // Poetry
She loved dance classes… adding little flourishes of her own… almost flying around the perimeter / of the studio, swift feet barely touching / the wood-grained laminate floor. "She thought her shoulder / would heal on its own, / but... stabbed her / with sharp red-hot fragments / of crushed glass. / Moderate to severe degenerative changes. / You can see it on the x-rays… Pain is her constant companion now, / worse whenever she moves. / Easier, much easier, / to be still.”
Maybe Today // Fiction
“The carousel slows, creaks to a halt; the steam organ sighs and groans out its last breath. In the silence, the women wait, each hoping to see her daughter emerge from the far side of the square, wave and call out “Maman, c’est moi”. But nobody climbs down off the horse, clambers out of the shell-shaped carriage or alights from the fire engine.”
Summer Storm on East 38th Street // Poetry
“See over there, around that corner, they will come running, / sneakers slapping the summer sidewalk - / rain droplets polka dot the gray cement. / They jump hedges. They avoid the house / where the ivy grows thick over windows / like Rapunzel’s hair in reverse… / We were all caged animals that summer.”
The Archaeology of Dreams // Poetry
“Dreams...submerge...like a forgotten / room in the house, a secret chamber… the door / stands ajar…slowly cracking open / light within.”
Laces // Fiction
“I looked at my shoes and how she had tightened the laces tight but not too tight, just tight enough. All four laces facing upwards like bouncy curls with dyed highlights of purple and green for me, pink and yellow for her… Twenty years went by. There it was in black and white on the front of a national newspaper. She was the talk of our local town and I’m sure plenty of other towns… I thought about why she hadn’t come looking for me. I don’t know why I thought that but something in me wanted to question why.”
Green in Amber // CNF
“He paints a picture for us of Einstein in a classroom smudged with chalk. He tells his students that space has no absolute value. You’re never where you were three seconds ago. You’ll never again be where you are right now…We’re playing house. It’s supposed to feel good to pretend. It’s killing me. I take my eyeglass spray and clean his watch for him. It’s thick metal warms in my touch. I put the watch back exactly as he left it on the table. Stolen intimacy tastes like a tarnished spoon.”
The Mailbox // Fiction
“The mailbox came one day in early June. It was nailed firmly to the ground and it was shiny and brand new and smelled like cold metal. Its mouth was wide and gaping waiting for the mail to pass through it. They piled cement on its four legs and it stood there firmly, secure, permanent.”
A Big Quarry in a Small Place Named Genoa // CNF
“Kids who swam in the quarry came out smelling like a basement. Little chlorine was used since fish were abundant. This meant that water shone green at the end of summer and only turned clear again come winter. In these clearer times, many people looked to those lower depths on brightest days only to see rippling shadows that still concealed the bottom. It was in these shadows that people of Genoa knew the quarry held many wondrous things.”
Stormy Weather // CNF
“In the trees above us I spot bright green parakeets that are flitting and flying and squawking at us. They are in constant motion, falling in love. They are out of place. How did they get there? Sandro, my brother-in-law, asks as we walk. I shake my head. It feels personal, I say. A question like that… I ask Valentina on the drive from Rome to Macerata if she ever wonders how she'll die… Sandro in the front seat balks and says he never thinks of death at all, but Valentina, at 26 -- she does… Andiamo. Under mountains who have lived here their whole lives as we move, unbeknownst to them, underneath. Through mass and form and thick of rock, we speed right on through.”
Joy in Unexpected Fields // CNF
“I sensed the coach’s ears prick up when he heard my voice… British accent -- must be a player!... I felt I should explain to our coach that his optimism was in vain. As we gathered there in 1980, British football was indisputably a man’s game... We wanted to assert our womanhood, without sounding “girly.” Nothing seemed quite right… I explained that in antiquity a virago was either an Amazonian heroine or a belligerent harridan, depending on your point of view. Or a shrew, a hellcat, a spitfire – the list goes on. I freely admit to stealing the name from the then-revolutionary feminist publisher… It’s not true, of course – wanting it doesn’t make it so… But four decades ago, I dared to wonder for a moment if everything I’d assumed about myself was not set in stone. And it was beautiful.”
Murfreesboro // CNF
“The most inconceivable moment of my life was being in that delivery room… How totally unimaginable, me, a father… The resilience of a little life, I assure you, he says, it’s astonishing, amazing really, trust me… You’ll see, he’ll be fine in no time… Visiting the old country two years later, the toddler delights in pushing his stroller, in particular over the bumps of a cobbled road. Marcus is rarely a passenger, but prefers to captain his carriage with aplomb and curiosity. And his Omi, considerably slowed by Parkinson’s by then, sways her grandson in her lap in the kitchen of my youth. Familie, she says… as if realizing that we’re well equipped to carry on, carry on..”
Storm Shelter // Fiction
“After avoiding a sock to the eye, Gabriel smooths his beanie over his eyebrows and hisses, “Your grandma is a fucking psycho.’ ‘Really Gabe?’ I say over my shoulder. ‘I wasn’t aware.’… Long before her brain started sabotaging itself, Nana chased storms for a living. She’d come home with electrifying stories risking her life for the sake of research. Pulling over and clambering out to witness the funnel build. Taking cover in the nearest ditch. Braking just in time to miss a toppled powerline… I wished to be older, but never considered that Nana would age with me.”
Grief Manifests as Dancing in the Animal Crossing Butterfly Exhibit // Fiction
“I just finished planting a garden for a humanoid cat with Buddy Holly glasses. My therapist is concerned with my time spent gaming and suggests getting out of the house more often, maybe meditation. I gather fruit, dig for fossils… I met someone today—a green-haired avatar who looked like Billy Idol. She gifted me a rare fish for my aquarium. I gave her a black rose. We watched shooting stars and danced in the museum’s butterfly exhibit, and I forgot I’m deathly afraid of butterflies, for a few minutes, with her.”
His Butterfly // Poetry
“It has been decades, nevertheless, today he is a nine-year-old fourth grader in Sacred Heart school, who fell out of a tree and onto the exposed barbs at the top of a playground chain link fence. He is walking home with a shred of skin flapping against his knee as blood stains his ripped Levi 501 jeans… His mother exits the car, opens the rear passenger door, and he, without hesitation, hops in. No words spoken. It’s as if she knows - what, where, when, and how… Sometimes the image of that butterfly recurs – when picking up a prescription refill… when he reads the Band-Aid labels… the rounded butterfly – he remembers his mother’s magical powers.”
Summer in a Box // Fiction
“There it was. Sitting on the glass counter. Twinkling silver cellophane. This year's Yankees team pack… He must’ve seen our faces because he smiled... ‘Take it, boys. It’s yours.’ Euphoria, exploding like fireworks. Joy, sweet pure joy. ‘Oh thankyouthankyou…’ … So many summers have come and gone since that day.. The static of the radio, the thump of a ball in a glove, rereading the fifth Harry Potter, my brother saying words I can no longer hear. One day though, I know I will open up the box. One day, I will buy an Arizona can and sift through the old summers on my bed. I am not quite ready yet. But yes, I suppose one day I will do all of that.”
Scampton // Poetry
“You don't realise it then / but things could go very badly: the field is huge / and you could go on wandering for hours, / never finding a way out… You never feel frightened, though. If anything, / it feels like an adventure. / You and your father are making a den, digging a hole in the snow, / close by where the wall should be… There's nothing to do, so / you don't stay there for long. / The joy of the den was in the making of it… You are sitting in your uncle's car – it's drawn up on the grass… It's a sports car, the dash / all switches, dials, like in an aeroplane. Bombs away! / You release the brake: the car rolls down the grass. Somebody shouts. / Your uncle, later, stood in the living room, rubbing his sore arm / and looking from you, to mum and dad and back again.”
“Whatever your opinion, know that
I could make up stories–
long, sweet, colorful stories–
about all of these things…
whatever I said would be true…
because that is the nature of this place.”
The Coming of Whales // Fiction
“This is a story of a village by the sea. The shopkeepers in the village smile when they say ‘Good morning!’ and the children of the village play long after sundown on the village square. The people of the village are fit and happy. They tend their gardens and they dance at celebrations. And if someone is ever in need, everyone lends a helping hand. It is that kind of village. But it has not always been that way.”
Oceanside // Fiction
“It sounded like swords. Like bees in a meadow. Like a city humming at night. Horse hooves on sand. Sneakers slapping against the road. A dragon snapping her jaws. Sailors lost at sea… And tomorrow, when we were home, we knew the story that we would tell our children.
Moebius Strip // Fiction
“I know, too, that legends invariably grow in the telling. Was he really as bad as all that? When I think about it, I do have some good memories of the time before we left him, as well as bad ones. Like the time I got given one of those books for boys you used to get, full of illustrated stories. It included a page full of magic tricks. One of them, called the magic loop, looked easy to do and captured my imagination.”
Displaced Person // CNF
“My childhood included…a kitchen cupboard offering a choice between Wonder Bread, French bread, whole wheat, and sourdough… As I stood there, I tried to imagine the red crosses painted on the roofs, the sirens screaming, the hunger, the want, the trauma. If there was something to absorb, it would be… a young Serbian boy heading out early in the morning, ready to stand in line for as long as it takes to get loaf of bread for his mother.”
Language isn’t what matters // Poetry
“My grandfather, the second son of an Alpine contadino,
used to scythe grass with his sister on the slopes
of Monte Saccarello for hay. To look down from there
to the chasm of the tiny valley makes my head reel.”
between a drowning man // Poetry
“between a drowning man and my child’s skinny dipping
between lip and kiss…
between the fibreglass fishing rod and the spinning lure
between old Capague and Montulet…
by the old gods of rumour
all the bridges are falling down”
Legacy // Poetry
“Afterlife is a matter of things left behind,
a few photographs passed down and stored in a box…
Sometimes, I think of sending trinkets
and treasures to everyone I know.”
Multiverse Ars Poetica // Poetry
“This lake / has been here forever, but moves / high Sierras to northern Minnesota… Nothing / is happening. It isn’t / an event. There is no / special moment. Like a polaroid… one Tuesday in 1979.”
Reverse Migration // Poetry
“Scientists say they are moved
by the changing of the light…
that guides them up the rivers,
through snow squalls,
past lightning…
my daughter guides her daughters
through the cobbled streets…
chatter nursery songs…
I cannot understand, lost
words reclaimed.”
Elderberry Wine and Jack Daniels // CNF
“Dad came out of the house and squatted on the top step. The brothers said they’d paid their priest to pray Marie out of purgatory and into Heaven but were afraid the priest’s prayers had been insufficient. They wondered if Dad would help pray her into Heaven. The brothers brought a fifth of Jack Daniels and a couple six-packs of cold beer to help with the praying. Dad agreed… Our bookcase held an old, dog-eared Bible and a Koran, but my father was not a praying man as far as I knew. Still, there he sat in the hot sun, passing the bottle of Jack and praying.”
To a Father, Never Known // Poetry
“Why did you flee your task / the one for which you were anointed. / Couldn’t you see our home laid ruin / consumed by its own wrath, nothing / to heed, no voice to which to turn… All you left were the words of others / a momentary Moses.”
An Old Friend // Fiction
“Another planet, another job, it’s becoming a blur. I see the city as we slowly descend onto a flashing landing pad. A rambling sprawl of ramshackle houses bake under the waning sun, its fading rays of light cast an orangish hue over the city amidst an endless desert. ‘Music is the only thing that calms him, he has nightmares often… I work in the trash processor in the desert, it is harsh but it helps me forget.’ On a table, a butterfly soars around fruitlessly in an overturned glass vase… I have a vision, that I quit, that I work on a cargo ship that soars around the galaxy. I have friends, maybe even a family, one day when I retire I’ll sit on the beach and watch the waves crash ceaselessly into the sand.”
Daphne // Poetry
She loved dance classes… adding little flourishes of her own… almost flying around the perimeter / of the studio, swift feet barely touching / the wood-grained laminate floor. "She thought her shoulder / would heal on its own, / but... stabbed her / with sharp red-hot fragments / of crushed glass. / Moderate to severe degenerative changes. / You can see it on the x-rays… Pain is her constant companion now, / worse whenever she moves. / Easier, much easier, / to be still.”
Maybe Today // Fiction
“The carousel slows, creaks to a halt; the steam organ sighs and groans out its last breath. In the silence, the women wait, each hoping to see her daughter emerge from the far side of the square, wave and call out “Maman, c’est moi”. But nobody climbs down off the horse, clambers out of the shell-shaped carriage or alights from the fire engine.”
Summer Storm on East 38th Street // Poetry
“See over there, around that corner, they will come running, / sneakers slapping the summer sidewalk - / rain droplets polka dot the gray cement. / They jump hedges. They avoid the house / where the ivy grows thick over windows / like Rapunzel’s hair in reverse… / We were all caged animals that summer.”
The Archaeology of Dreams // Poetry
“Dreams...submerge...like a forgotten / room in the house, a secret chamber… the door / stands ajar…slowly cracking open / light within.”
Laces // Fiction
“I looked at my shoes and how she had tightened the laces tight but not too tight, just tight enough. All four laces facing upwards like bouncy curls with dyed highlights of purple and green for me, pink and yellow for her… Twenty years went by. There it was in black and white on the front of a national newspaper. She was the talk of our local town and I’m sure plenty of other towns… I thought about why she hadn’t come looking for me. I don’t know why I thought that but something in me wanted to question why.”
Green in Amber // CNF
“He paints a picture for us of Einstein in a classroom smudged with chalk. He tells his students that space has no absolute value. You’re never where you were three seconds ago. You’ll never again be where you are right now…We’re playing house. It’s supposed to feel good to pretend. It’s killing me. I take my eyeglass spray and clean his watch for him. It’s thick metal warms in my touch. I put the watch back exactly as he left it on the table. Stolen intimacy tastes like a tarnished spoon.”
The Mailbox // Fiction
“The mailbox came one day in early June. It was nailed firmly to the ground and it was shiny and brand new and smelled like cold metal. Its mouth was wide and gaping waiting for the mail to pass through it. They piled cement on its four legs and it stood there firmly, secure, permanent.”
A Big Quarry in a Small Place Named Genoa // CNF
“Kids who swam in the quarry came out smelling like a basement. Little chlorine was used since fish were abundant. This meant that water shone green at the end of summer and only turned clear again come winter. In these clearer times, many people looked to those lower depths on brightest days only to see rippling shadows that still concealed the bottom. It was in these shadows that people of Genoa knew the quarry held many wondrous things.”
Stormy Weather // CNF
“In the trees above us I spot bright green parakeets that are flitting and flying and squawking at us. They are in constant motion, falling in love. They are out of place. How did they get there? Sandro, my brother-in-law, asks as we walk. I shake my head. It feels personal, I say. A question like that… I ask Valentina on the drive from Rome to Macerata if she ever wonders how she'll die… Sandro in the front seat balks and says he never thinks of death at all, but Valentina, at 26 -- she does… Andiamo. Under mountains who have lived here their whole lives as we move, unbeknownst to them, underneath. Through mass and form and thick of rock, we speed right on through.”
Joy in Unexpected Fields // CNF
“I sensed the coach’s ears prick up when he heard my voice… British accent -- must be a player!... I felt I should explain to our coach that his optimism was in vain. As we gathered there in 1980, British football was indisputably a man’s game... We wanted to assert our womanhood, without sounding “girly.” Nothing seemed quite right… I explained that in antiquity a virago was either an Amazonian heroine or a belligerent harridan, depending on your point of view. Or a shrew, a hellcat, a spitfire – the list goes on. I freely admit to stealing the name from the then-revolutionary feminist publisher… It’s not true, of course – wanting it doesn’t make it so… But four decades ago, I dared to wonder for a moment if everything I’d assumed about myself was not set in stone. And it was beautiful.”
Murfreesboro // CNF
“The most inconceivable moment of my life was being in that delivery room… How totally unimaginable, me, a father… The resilience of a little life, I assure you, he says, it’s astonishing, amazing really, trust me… You’ll see, he’ll be fine in no time… Visiting the old country two years later, the toddler delights in pushing his stroller, in particular over the bumps of a cobbled road. Marcus is rarely a passenger, but prefers to captain his carriage with aplomb and curiosity. And his Omi, considerably slowed by Parkinson’s by then, sways her grandson in her lap in the kitchen of my youth. Familie, she says… as if realizing that we’re well equipped to carry on, carry on..”
Storm Shelter // Fiction
“After avoiding a sock to the eye, Gabriel smooths his beanie over his eyebrows and hisses, “Your grandma is a fucking psycho.’ ‘Really Gabe?’ I say over my shoulder. ‘I wasn’t aware.’… Long before her brain started sabotaging itself, Nana chased storms for a living. She’d come home with electrifying stories risking her life for the sake of research. Pulling over and clambering out to witness the funnel build. Taking cover in the nearest ditch. Braking just in time to miss a toppled powerline… I wished to be older, but never considered that Nana would age with me.”
Grief Manifests as Dancing in the Animal Crossing Butterfly Exhibit // Fiction
“I just finished planting a garden for a humanoid cat with Buddy Holly glasses. My therapist is concerned with my time spent gaming and suggests getting out of the house more often, maybe meditation. I gather fruit, dig for fossils… I met someone today—a green-haired avatar who looked like Billy Idol. She gifted me a rare fish for my aquarium. I gave her a black rose. We watched shooting stars and danced in the museum’s butterfly exhibit, and I forgot I’m deathly afraid of butterflies, for a few minutes, with her.”
His Butterfly // Poetry
“It has been decades, nevertheless, today he is a nine-year-old fourth grader in Sacred Heart school, who fell out of a tree and onto the exposed barbs at the top of a playground chain link fence. He is walking home with a shred of skin flapping against his knee as blood stains his ripped Levi 501 jeans… His mother exits the car, opens the rear passenger door, and he, without hesitation, hops in. No words spoken. It’s as if she knows - what, where, when, and how… Sometimes the image of that butterfly recurs – when picking up a prescription refill… when he reads the Band-Aid labels… the rounded butterfly – he remembers his mother’s magical powers.”
Summer in a Box // Fiction
“There it was. Sitting on the glass counter. Twinkling silver cellophane. This year's Yankees team pack… He must’ve seen our faces because he smiled... ‘Take it, boys. It’s yours.’ Euphoria, exploding like fireworks. Joy, sweet pure joy. ‘Oh thankyouthankyou…’ … So many summers have come and gone since that day.. The static of the radio, the thump of a ball in a glove, rereading the fifth Harry Potter, my brother saying words I can no longer hear. One day though, I know I will open up the box. One day, I will buy an Arizona can and sift through the old summers on my bed. I am not quite ready yet. But yes, I suppose one day I will do all of that.”
Scampton // Poetry
“You don't realise it then / but things could go very badly: the field is huge / and you could go on wandering for hours, / never finding a way out… You never feel frightened, though. If anything, / it feels like an adventure. / You and your father are making a den, digging a hole in the snow, / close by where the wall should be… There's nothing to do, so / you don't stay there for long. / The joy of the den was in the making of it… You are sitting in your uncle's car – it's drawn up on the grass… It's a sports car, the dash / all switches, dials, like in an aeroplane. Bombs away! / You release the brake: the car rolls down the grass. Somebody shouts. / Your uncle, later, stood in the living room, rubbing his sore arm / and looking from you, to mum and dad and back again.”