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Curated
Short Stories

When I was nine years old, my father hired me a whore. A whore, logically, who was nine years old. I have forgotten the clothes, the toys, the food, everything that was my life at nine years of age, but I have not forgotten the whore

I was nineteen. It was the pre-relief, pre-WPA 1 world of the depression. I would start running as soon as I got off the streetcar, running up the stairs, the place smelling sour, and awake or asleep to startle awake, when she saw me she would break into a clogged weeping that could not be comforted, a weeping I can hear yet

This was on the third day after Lazarus had arisen from the grave. Since then many had felt that his gaze was the gaze of destruction, but neither those who had been forever crushed by it, nor those who in the prime of life (mysterious even as death) had found the will to resist his glance, could ever explain the terror that lay immovable in the depths of his black pupils

I sat near a window and the ship moved away from the dock. I sniffed my skin, but the smell was gone. In this country there was a smell of poverty, and it was a different smell than the scent of the South’s sun warmed indifference; this was the smell of a cold and poor northern land’s fear, and the fear was contagious