Glimmer Train Stories, #98

Literary short stories by established and emerging writers.Excerpts:David Mizner Your Swim Daisy's eating with Jonathan's two girls, using the cooler as a table, and even Sammy joins. Jo laughs at something Frances said. Our families are falling in love. Miranda July Interview by David Naimon I thought it would be the hardest thing I'd ever done, because everyone says that and people are always not finishing their novels. It is hard, but it's a certain kind of hard that is comfortable for me. It's all on me. It's all an internal, private process. Zain Saeed The Earth Is a Stingy Bastard He said something back about him having a name, bitch, and about this not being funny, gaandu, and other things I did not understand because he switched to Memoni as he had a tendency to do when he was properly mad, like, bad mad. Stefanie Freele Everything But What We Need The cycle interrupted itself, began, and washed his dishes again. And again, and again, and again, and again, and again. For approximately seven weeks, the now-broken dishwasher washed that same blue-glass lasagna pan over and over. Ezekiel N. Finkelstein Clayton and the Apocalypse: Scenes from an Earlier Life When he jumped it felt like forever, at the same time like no time immediately he was the soberest he had ever been he was surprised. He realized he'd made a mistake: he was falling. He'd always thought of it as jumping. Taiyaba Husain How You Respond to an Emergency It comes as a surprise to you both when your father steps in to parent you. He is late but not too late. Jeffrey Rotter In a Lake House She had so many interesting things to say about plumbing and celery fiber, subjects about which I know next to nothing. New ideas energize me. Gabe Herron Suzette There's some kind of magic that happens in places like that, where fathers and sons take their rests together after the work. Their arms made heavy and dumb by it, but their minds made clear and calm. Lara Markstein The American When I was eighteen, I lived in a small shared flat with an American and a German on an alley off Nguyen Thi Minh Khai in Saigon. Anthony DeCasper Redshift I've gone from near death to cancer remission, to cancer with a re-mission of death twice before. I just don't have any fuel left in my reserves for this next battle. S.P. MacIntyre Pinch I consider myself a pretty unflappable guy, but with my heart batting against the inside of my chest like a moth in a killing jar and the cocaine giving everything a furious urgency, I'm surprised that the only thing I could muster was, "What are you doing?" Theodora ZiolkowskiWe Thank You for Your Cleanliness So I'm baking cookies for Josh and his friend Kyle when it starts ringing, and think it must be Aunt Louise or a telemarketer, because only Aunt Louise and telemarketers have this number. Perri KlassHeart Attack on a PlateGood night, they say, each in turn, and tonight she says back, each time, heartbreakingly obedient, Good night, good night, good night. Caleb Leisure Atlantic on SundayAnd how were they supposed to behave? There was no loudspeaker instruction or police ordinance or Hollywood blueprint to follow. No established etiquette. There was only the ancient instruction of impulse.