Glimmer Train Stories, #70

Excerpts:

Aria Beth Sloss
Toward a Theory of Blindness
The dirt blows in through the windows, leaving a dusting like pollen across my bed; out along the roads, it paints over the baobabs until the wood's just a shape, a mess of red fingers grabbing at the sky.

Scott Nadelson
Aftermath
"Whoa! Larry! Whoa!"
He fell forward against the seatbelt, and its recoil knocked him back again. "I got it under control," Larry said.
"'Whoa.' What am I, a horse?"

Miriam Novogrodsky
Just Enough Food to Remember
I have never been around a person as old as Lila. Her life is unraveling, like a scarf somebody spent time knitting. I want to capture it before it's in a heap on the floor, keep the stitches intact, the work not gone to waste.

Lauren Groff
Delicate Edible Birds
Fucking Reynaud, handing the city over to the Germans. A real man would stand and fight.

Will Allison
Interview by Andrew Scott
I've gotten to the point where I tell myself that I'm not even writing, I'm just sketching, dumping raw material on the page. That helps take the pressure off. In the end, it's really just a big leap of faith, believing that it will all eventually amount to something.

Stephanie Dickinson
A Hole in the Soup
That woman kept looking. It was odd how you could hear a head turning your way and feel someone's eyes.

David Allan Cates
Rubber Boy
I'd been a child. Then a soldier. Then I sold insurance. Then I went crazy. Then I became a student, a nurse, a husband, a father. Each stage led to the next, but I couldn't remember the bridges.

Erica Johnson Debeljak
Blind Spots
Whether you do or whether you don't. Either way there's a risk that something will go wrong or, more alarming still, that something will go right and who knows what the consequences of that might be? Or hah! that nothing will change at all.

Joshua Canipe
Preacher Stories
Each snake had its own cage, usually two or three strung out across the backseat, which made the interior of the car smell like musk and cucumbers. It was a sweet scent, but sharp, something they only emitted when attacked. When we got out of the car for the church service, the scent clung to my pants and shirt, my clip-on tie.

Ed Allen
Krankenhaus
Europe has a different smell, he remembers from previous non-academic trips. The pollution level is no worse, but here it is softer, with more complexity to its mix of smoke flavors.