Keep It Moving: A Story Published in Clarion Magazine, October 2016

Keep It Moving: A Story Published in Clarion Magazine, October 2016

The night air smelled of alligators.

Marty drove the Suburban down the wet boulevard that extended like a black tongue. Mangrove trees lunged at the truck from both sides, their gnarled limbs mired in the marshland. How different this ride felt from the morning walk he had been taking in the opposite direction toward Jerry’s Marketplace to buy the daily paper, when the birds whistled at him and jewels of sunlight winked through the leaves as if to herald his homecoming. Now, he knew that if he pressed the accelerator to the floor, he would catapult the entire family into San Carlos Bay.
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The Extra Mile: A Story Published in Visitant Literary Magazine, August 2016

The Extra Mile: A Story Published in Visitant Literary Magazine, August 2016

Before the boy’s cleats tore up the Southern grass one last time, before he saw his father on the sidelines, creasing his Army uniform to wipe the dirt from his shoes, before his father left again, before the divorce almost happened. Before his mother moved him and his sister North to the town of The King Unwilling, of witch trials and psychoses on the old village hill. Before the boy faded out and withdrew, pressed his pen to paper, engraved his troubles in a yielding canvas. Before he was the variable in the Algebraic equations, before the brown-haired girl was the answer.

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