FRACTURED   The snow maids among us are idle angels too terrified to plumb the icy depths of murderous woe. Their eyes are thick with wax, smiles startled artifice, words unintelligible skeletons. Lovers cannot repair the distance; they are but shadows on the lawn, roosters who savage along. I shall be well again a hollow phrase they repeat in therapy where they dream someday it will ring sapphire true. Until then they lie in bleached valleys of waste and shame, fractured mirrors, aborted stars. * * * Lorie Adair is the recipient of several Norman Mailer Scholarships and Arizona Commission on the Arts Creative Writing fellowships. Spider Woman’s Loom was a finalist for the Southwest Writers Award and a semi-finalist for the Dana Award. She has written for NPR affiliate, KJZZ, and her fiction and…

Continue reading →

In Love with a Ghost It was a silent slipping away. They hadn’t just grown apart. That would make it seem like they could grow together if they had the motivation, but they had no compelling incentive to move together, or move on for that matter. They would rather be unhappy together than alone. It had been 15 years, after all. They became roommates who shared the same bed, mailing address, and monthly Sunday romp. She didn’t talk to her friends about her loveless marriage over coffee or her profound loneliness over lunch. Jesus, just finish already. I faked it ten minutes ago. I even finished my shopping list. Maybe you should lay off the pork rinds for a while. You shouldn’t have to work this hard. Do you have to pant and groan in…

Continue reading →

Thinking About Macaws The first time I rode in John’s brown minivan was on an afternoon in late August during our freshman year of college. There was a coffee-flavored e-cigarette in the cup holder between the driver’s seat and shotgun. I hardly noticed it at first, since I was too intent on listening to The Smiths, our favorite band. As soon as I got in the car, I took John’s CD case out of his glove compartment and started flipping through it. “Put in Louder Than Bombs,” John said. “It’s their best album.” I did. After “Is It Really So Strange?” started playing, I noticed the e-cigarette for the first time and asked John what it was. He explained, then offered me some. When I refused, John picked it up and began inhaling deeply. My…

Continue reading →

THE SPOT This is my spot. It’s been mine since I was a boy. The water’s choppy and the current’s swift, but I love it. This is where I come when I want to be alone or to think—or to fish, just for the fun of it, or sometimes just to drink my whiskey in peace. Of course, if I come out here and I find some joker’s got it, then I get upset, so I have to keep an eye on it. If someone gets too close when I’m out here, that’s just as bad. This is a mile offshore at Fort Monroe, Virginia, where the James River flows into the Chesapeake Bay and meets the Atlantic Ocean at Hampton Roads. It’s right on the edge of the channel, at the drop off, where…

Continue reading →

White Noise Like the undulating highways in a Texan landscape, —The cacti, lizards, dead soil, dry vegetation and brown hills in a dusty rolling flat plain on a harsh mid-day, providing no immediate relief to weary eyes— Heaving deserts of Sahara and relentless Thar, harbouring skeletons under its shifting dunes. Unending galleries of Palace of Versailles with pieces from past, The long passages that easily tire the tourists with handy cams. The unfathomable dark depths off the Atlantic ocean thrashing about its spiked tail Churning its bed and upsetting weeds And the innards of a labyrinthine Dharavi slums, Sweating and weaving bags and leather goods for the folks Searching for cheap goods that cost five times in nearby malls. Middle-class families remain silent and apart; While eating on the same glass table filled with fruits,…

Continue reading →

They spoke with their hooded eyelids, inches away from the other’s face. There was no need for room, only each other. Only their secrets. Those secrets one assumes only they hold when in fact the person sitting next to them, breathing the same air, is thinking the same false thought. Too many secrets. Too many unanswered questions. Too many unasked questions. Not enough time. They were invested in each other, fully, completely, yet they only knew what the other chose to trust them with. Humans are such untrustworthy creatures, it takes too long to believe someone is undoubtedly who they say they are. Words are a flight risk, but conversations that only involve long, solemn glances and quick, excited stares? Those are difficult to fake. A pendant around one of their necks lightly tapped on…

Continue reading →

Thirteen Ways to Deny an Ending Position your body between the door and his body, then turn to stone. Spread your tears like thin ice beneath her feet, and then turn to glass. Lecture like a doomsday astronomer—warn against the Earth without the sun, the tides without the moon… Counter with a mathematical argument—perhaps something about the number 2 and natural balance, or the number 1 being too odd. Make up an excuse to leave the theater before the final act—if a curtain falls and you are not there to see it, then… Rub raw onion (or any handy irritant) in your eyes, and renew your faith in chemistry. Imagine that you are merely playing tennis and redefine terms like match, break, love… Rewrite history—especially the darker periods—and try to sell the revision as best…

Continue reading →

Bowl of Peaches “So what did she say to you?” Setting: bowl of peaches, napkin holder, salt and pepper shaker, one bottle of Hendricks, filthy glasses, dim light, anger, sadness. Music: Handwritten plays softly in the room over. The gin was poured. “She didn’t say much.” Then: “Well, not anything real important.” Memories washed over his face as rain began to fall, cool wind dancing in through a ratty screen, a threat of a storm on a night where this conversation exists more wonderfully than anything else. Characters: two friends in a near dark room, one girl, one guy. Another girl, way offstage, from another town. “I pulled around the side of her house on the other street. I looked over to her backyard. I saw other people. I assumed that one of them was…

Continue reading →

“Hendry! Will you stop it? Hendry! You’ll hurt yourself,” the eight-year-old boy’s mother pleaded, wringing her hands in desperation. Hendry, better known as Henry to his friends, ignored his mother as he swung from limb to limb, climbing to the top of the mighty maple tree. “Ta-da!” he exclaimed, thrusting his hands into the air in a victory sign. “Hendry!” his mother shrieked. “You’ll kill yourself. Come down this instant!” “Relax, Mom.” Henry peered down at his distraught mother. “My super powers will save the day!” “What you’ll have is a sore rear end when I catch you. Now, be careful and come down. You’ll never amount to anything climbing trees.” Dear God, help Henry down in one piece she pleaded, grasping her hands to her bosom. “What a view! I can see for miles.”…

Continue reading →

Fall Farewell We walked that fall day looking at the leaves, we talked that day; Nature, you, and me. “The leaves are so beautiful,” I said, as we communed together, “It’s Nature’s last farewell,” you said, Before the dying weather.” “Life is like the leaves, I think,” You said, almost too softly to hear. “It has its most beautiful moment, When it knows that death is near.” “Too bad it’s not the same, for people,” I replied. You stopped, and turned, and took my arms, And looked into my eyes. “Sometimes, perhaps, it just might be,” You whispered to the wind. “Am I beautiful now?” you asked. As we resumed our walk again. ### And then, that night you slipped from life— To your immortal end. And still, to me, your beauty lasts, my dear…

Continue reading →