The sandcherries and chokecherries are in full blossom in their ordered rows along the boundaries of the set-aside and in irregular swathes branching into the grass, erect blossoms at full attention to the sun and the bees at them sluggish with pollen. They have brought shovels and hoes and are at work clearing the […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
"They picked me up in their spaceship about noon," Austin Grantham says to me while pulling up an apple crate to use as a stool. I’m sitting outside the Smith’s Farm Supply and General Store shelling peas because my dad thinks it’s good for me. My dad and I don‘t always agree on such points. […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Everything was moving at a normal pace until he showed up. Eleventh graders listened to their teacher’s unremitting spiel on a work of literature. Miss Sheila Singleton, a first year English teacher, reeked of green skill and floral perfume, and when he arrived, she eagerly dragged out a literature book from a rusty filing cabinet, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
After work, Clint and Danny rolled through the orange streetlights on Main Street and into the darkness on the far side of town. Danny thought about telling Clint to turn around and take him home, where his father would be asleep in front of the TV and his mother asleep in bed. Instead, he watched […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Outside a dilapidated outhouse a man by the name of Goodman waited impatiently for his turn. He stood on his right toe with his left boot heel, trying to not think about the deep burn that was welling up from his loins. His forehead burst into a frothy sweat. He knocked on the door’s driftwood […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Not for Vegetarians I. I had never killed anything other than bugs, and I told Jay, who laughed and put me in a headlock. “You need to go duck hunting with me tomorrow afternoon,” he said, and it wasn’t a suggestion. So the next afternoon, we shoved off the lake shore in Jay’s old aluminum […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Joe and Pearl sat on either side of the kitchen table, a crystal ball between them. “Can you get that thing to work?” Joe said, pointing his chin at the crystal, which rested on a small pile of black velvet cloth in the middle of the chipped enamel tabletop. Just like a man, Pearl thought, […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
In his hand, the Sonoran Mountain Kingsnake. Around his neck, green stripes of the Rosy Boa. “You want to touch him don’t you?” “Never have.” She says, abruptly realizing how inexperienced this sounds. “Cold-blooded.” Taking her hand, he holds her palm along the snake on his neck. “Cool to the touch.” “I know. I know.” She tries […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Dan says he’s getting tired of me talking in my sleep. Says I mumble like a child and toss and turn, flail my arms. What I see is the inside of the school bus. I see forty kids laughing. Then the bus tilts and the laughter stops. Water rushes in like a biblical downpour and […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Two AM. Highway 50. Ely, Nevada. We laughed out loud at the Break-a-Heart Hotel in Silver Springs, flew past the Last Chance Saloon in Austin, then passed up the Parsonage House in Eureka. A coyote darted across both lanes a few minutes ago, and I've seen more road-kill in one night than in a lifetime […] ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator (magazine) Issue 0
GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator (magazine) Issue 1
