Read
“She slides the test into her binder and turns the phrase over in her mind. Boys don’t like girls who are too smart. Adds it to a pile of similar statements. A list that grows and grows, until it seems to encompass every conceivable thing Alison could do, or wear, or think, or be.”
Short Story / Contemporary Literature / 4 Minute Read
Closeted in a conservative community, a young teenage girl struggles to navigate the growing weight of gender expectations.
“The President had announced the curfew at the beginning of the month, in a special 9am broadcast sent out to all of the country’s televisions and radios. There was a war on, he said, a war against ‘the criminal element’…”
Short Story / General Fiction / 18 Minute Read
A woman’s precarious balancing act on the margins of society is disrupted by a sudden shift in the political winds.
Apartment 1848
“The bedroom wasn’t built for a couple. The walls were lined with cabinets, a narrow, anti-bac foam mattress wedged into a bunk under a small frosted window. Books, clothes, and keepsakes overflowed storage onto the floor…”
Short Story / Speculative Fiction / 14 Minute Read
In a society where good housing and fair working conditions are scarce, a working class couple confronts an impossible choice.
People Next Door
“It was a normal Tuesday night, not long past dinnertime, when the man-next-door slammed the woman-next-door’s head through the wall. Into the wall… into the drywall? None of it had been clear to Daphne…”
Short Story / Contemporary Literature / 8 Minute Read
A violent incident, a hard knock on the door in the early morning. One woman finds herself comparing past and present, trying to decide how best to help the woman next door she’s never actually met.
The Space Between
“‘I just don’t think I could ever be friends with a girl like that!’ She spits it, her nose crinkling up. ‘How could you be?’”
Short Story / Contemporary Literature / 3 Minute Read
A teenage girl begins to reckon with the homophobia of her conservative community, as she realizes it may also apply to her.
The Encounter
“Rounding the bend, she felt the animal before she saw it, the great towering mass of it, the huff of its breath in the dark…”
Short Story / Surreal Fiction / 7 Minute Read
A restaurant server walking home after a late shift in a small mountain town encounters a creature not-quite-natural in the darkened streets.
Godsend
“If it comes from God, they said, it isn’t wrong. And he came from God, didn’t he?”
Short Story / Contemporary Literature / 2 Minute Read
Power, religion, a church misconduct investigation, and, in the middle of it all, one teenage girl trying to make sense of the universe, and her place in it.
Runaway
"Boy, you always did have those eyes, didn’t you? / Prairie highway for a gaze, boy / Due South to Mexico, West to the coast, boy / Anywhere but here in a third-hand pickup..."
Poetry / Free Verse / 1 Minute Read
trash to treasure lit publishes works authors discarded or “trashed” for one reason or another. Read one of my rare poems, along with a few sentences explaining why I originally gave up on selling it.
Wild Flowers
“Take me back to the birch bark grove / Where the trees stretch skyward, slender / And the ground is soft in spring..."
Poetry / Free Verse / 1 Minute Read
trash to treasure lit publishes works authors discarded or “trashed” for one reason or another. Read one of my rare poems, along with a few sentences explaining why I originally gave up on selling it.
Once Upon a Time in Maryland
“The times were far from happy, but they were stable and predictable in their badness, and that was almost good, in its own way.”
Short Story / Historical Fiction / 25 Minute Read
Head back to a dusty tobacco plantation in 1650s Maryland, for a tale of colonial violence, adversity, and the diverse ways we seek our freedom in an unforgiving world.
All Manner of Wounds
“Boxes of cellulose capsules sat open on the table beside a stack of books. Herbs steeped in large jars. There was lab equipment out on the counter, next to a row of slow cookers plugged into a portable battery.”
Short Story / Speculative Fiction / 24 Minute Read
Noemi is a diabetic single parent, managing her condition with DIY medication while working, attending school, and navigating the hostile infrastructure that defines the city in which she lives. When Noemi’s privileged girlfriend, Mila, decides it’s time their casual relationship became more serious, both women have to decide how much they’re willing to stretch, and trust, to meet each other halfway.
