The Pied Piper by Laurence Klavan This is a story many people secretly know yet rarely tell, for reasons that will become clear. It involves a woman whose name is familiar if you pay attention to theater, show business or the arts, but it’s not gossip, not as gossip...
White Belief by Uyen Phuong Dang After the war, the government started a campaign to number all the trees in the city. Let the future be as bounteous as the trees, it said. Then a few disappeared. One was found inside Baba’s rice bowl. It had small red lights for eyes...
Sermon on the Rocks by Vicki Nyman It always began when Mommy suddenly stood, her upper-middle-aged body rising from the sofa to hover above me, distant as the ceiling of a Gothic cathedral. The nave we called our living room would be rocked by seismic forces: the...
Won’t Not by Laura Leigh Morris I scan the room for Charlie’s blue overalls, waiting for him to pop from behind a bookshelf or from within the play kitchen. A group of two-year-olds tumbles over one another on the story mat, none of them Charlie. More dance...
Turn Back the Clock, But Only for an Afternoon by Martha Clarkson The first thing their email said was “your letter moved us to tears.” I had typed the letter on my father’s old Smith-Corona and enclosed ten reprints of various photos of the house where I was born. I...
A Recipe For Disaster by Denise Tolan Measure the following ingredients to form the crust: 1 teaspoon full of stories from my father’s childhood A dozen heaping cups of a single memory from when he was nine years old Use the dozen cups to form the base for the crust....
