I waded through pink and white sweet pea blossoms And through tall wide bladed razor grass Until I stood in the muddy water Where the weapons of our warfare grew I chose one for my worthy opponent With a brown fuzzy hilt and a long green blade And one for me, short Very short to make things fair My little cousin Jazra wasn’t three yet And she swung the long cattail around the yard She was Captain Hook And she laughed as t...

“Asexual man seeks asexual woman.” I crinkled my forehead, and read the personal ad again. What does this mean? In biology I learned that worms and bacteria are asexual, men and women aren’t? What would an asexual man want with an asexual woman? Am I asexual? Reading that one line in the personal ads on Craig’s List was an epiphany moment. I researched this “Asexual” thing and discovered that I solidly fit into the grey w...

White-trunked paper bark birch trees lined Duncan Street. Little golden spots of light wiggled through the dancing leaves. I was so happy to move onto the only pretty street in Killeen, Texas. My car broke down, and I decided to walk to church. Car after car pulled over, and men kept, well . . . umm . . . blush . . . Duncan Street was where Johns and walkers met up, more-so than all the rest of Killeen. On my drive to wor...

Yoro, the leader of the controlling particle, tapped his fingers on his desk. He had read the reports and they didn’t look good. There was kidney failure caused by all the Doritos he’d let the parrot eat. There were heart problems, and an aneurysm forming. The whole body was in acute pain, and needed to be shut down. Doritos are yummy. Are they worth it? “It looks bad.” Bjork, his second, said. “I’m going to miss this. It...

Bending low over a dead blue macaw, the scientist said “are you still in there.” Probes and wires sprouted from between blue feathers and from small holes drilled to access the dead creature’s peanut sized brain. “Why are you doing this?” The scientist jumped, not expecting to be interrupted in his basement laboratory, by his wife. Her face was crinkled with disapproval and disgust. The dead parrot’s mate, Minnie, trumpet...

My mom works to be busy, and hurts herself. She sleeps on the floor until she can move again. Then she works again, until she hurts again. For no reason and no pay. She talks on the phone and laughs aloud. Her friends drop by with no warning. Her dogs leap around her feet. The sun is warm on her red face. My dad sleeps all day and watches TV all night. He never works, and doesn't know how to, if he dared. He waits for the...

Gilly wasn't born deaf. He had painful inner ear infections as a kid. These days, they wouldn't remove parts of his inner ear like they did then. My mom's oldest sister was a student nurse who helped operate on him, she felt bad about it later. He managed alright by reading lips and watching what other people did, so when he was drafted and everyone else was raising their right hand and wiggling their pointer finger, he d...

Eloise, my mom, milked cows for a round faced dairy farmer named Bob Krump. He was having a bad year. There was a pile of black and white calves freezing near the corner of an unused corral. A few bears had been coming from the gray brush behind the house to eat calves. They had started reaching over the pens and helping themselves to live calves. They had knocked down part of the barbed wire fence in the misty grey brush...

Babbling Brad is the boss boss boss big shoes man Head full of rocks and blocks Head is red red red red And he said... and he said and he said and he said said said said I have to hang on every word cause he likes to talk squalk yack back crack snap I wanna balk walk  Whata crock Boss man Brad Noise from his red red head Makes me wish for layoff day Give me a walk-out box And socks to stuff someplace And a quiet little pl...

Missy, the girl who takes care of us, saw me looking at John sitting by the window reading the bible. “Corrie, do you want me to wheel you over?” I nodded and she pushed my chair to the corner and I sat next to John in the early morning sunlight. He’s reading his bible like he always does. I hate him. He stole my life, and he has the nerve to sit happily and read the bible. I close my eyes and think of Norway in 1900. My...

It felt good to sit at the long table with all the other girls. I’d never felt accepted by other kids at school before. At my last school, I was one of a handful of kids that weren’t Mormon, and they didn’t play with non-Mormons, but they weren’t mean to me. At the next table there was a boy named Tracey eating alone. He was tall with dark brown hair and blue eyes. He had a speech impediment that made him sound like he wa...

I walk along a back path to the bar and a group of large dark birds rise from the woods and circle above me. "I'm not dead yet," I think. Their swirling creeps me out, makes me feel vulnerable and small. Maybe they can feel how bad things are, and know how close the end is for me. I walk down the railroad tracks. Clomp clomp clomp-clomp ... with an awkward stride that is regulated by the distance between ties and not by m...

There once was a blue skeleton in a closet Who had a blue bucket full of goo A curious cat fell in the vat  And became blue too The cat was shockedI'm wetI'm gooeyI'm blueSo the cat did the only thing the cat could He flewHe flew out of the bucketAnd out of the closet tooWith a glowing blue streak He bounced off the ceilingPainting the bedroom all blue He rubbed a streak down the hallway wall He left tracks down the stair...

I am flying back and forth in the large room where we live in the rafters, when my sonar map shows a hole. A blank spot, how exciting. A new room to explore. I swiff through and my sonar begins giving my mind a map of the smaller rectangular room that I'm in, and yet another blank spot. This is so exciting, new rooms to explore. The guys say that the other parts of this house are haunted by monsters, but I'm a brave bat,...

I've spent more than two years of my life living in a tent, but less than three. I figured it all up once, but I forgot. My grandpa was a tribal cop who camped at the gate leading to the sacred sites during the summer months when the snow didn't guard the ancestral graves from robbers. A bottle of A1 steak sauce had broken over the square white canvas tent we stayed in, and I'm not a fan of A1 to this day. A bear wandered...