Fiction:
From “Love, Life & Death on the Oregon Trail: A Play by Krista Robinson, Age 11 2/3,” short story, The Hudson Review:
“There’s more, but what’s exciting is that we’re dividing into groups, and the sixth grade will present artistic visions to the whole entire school at an assembly. With parents invited. We’ll be artistic hotshots. I instantly know I’m writing a play. And starring in it. My deepest feelings belong on stage in the auditorium in front of everyone.”
***
From “Slow Children Playing,” short story, Pangyrus:
“My name is Krista. I might be the most interesting kid in this neighborhood, or maybe I’m only a know-it-all. I heard my mom say so to my dad, talking secretly about me one night after supper. I’m twelve, which is the age I most wanted to be, but now I want to be thirteen. Even if it ends up being the same as twelve, I can’t wait anyway.”
***
From “Who Else Would You Be?”, flash fiction, JMMW
“You’re sprawled out flat, head resting in his lap. He likes feeling he’s the biggest in a room, likes being posed in a dominant position. He wouldn’t know you notice this. He wouldn’t know the ways you adapt.”
***
From “Stay There,” short fiction, The Southern Review*
“Chita eyes me, nudging with urgent glances, which means business and someone to meet—it’s a party but it’s work. No part of my life is ever its own self. Before walking away, I indulge my glance on Tay, towering over these girls. They’re nodding in unison, such a serious conversation, a line of furrowed brows, but he laughs, and even in the party din, that’s clear as morning birdsong. My child would get that laugh, I think, knowing laughter doesn’t run in families, isn’t an inheritable trait.”
*Awarded 2020 Pushcart Prize.
*Included in the story collection, ADMIT THIS TO NO ONE
***
From “Till Death Do Us Part,” Great Jones Street*
“I’m meeting my stupid father “pre-performance” at the Kennedy Center bar on April 15. Which happens to be his wedding anniversary to my stupid mother. I know, who gets married on tax day? Who meets their kid on his wedding anniversary? They’re not married now, but still. I’m supposed to be there at 6 pm sharp. That’s how he still talks, like he’s a hundred-and-ten years old, like people say “sharp” every two seconds. I don’t even know what show we’re seeing, ballet or symphony or whatever. He brings the tickets.”
*Included in the story collection, ADMIT THIS TO NO ONE
*Available for purchase on Kindle here.
***
From “Hat Trick,” short fiction, Story*
In short, Kasey has been invited by her old college friend Ari to a hockey game, accompanied by Ari’s teenage son, Ben. Kasey gets the seat that Ari’s ex-fiancé should be sitting in. The Douche, is what Ari calls him, and Kasey’s too embarrassed to admit she’s forgotten his real name. She and Ari lost touch shortly after college and have only recently reconnected (thanks, LinkedIn!), though they both migrated from the Midwest to DC’s Virginia suburbs.
*Included in the story collection, ADMIT THIS TO NO ONE.
***
From “Shadow Daughter,” short fiction, The Hudson Review*
“I spouted clichés about still waters running deep while remembering how the boy drove me to a blues bar on Howard Street, putting down a twenty for as many shots of Wild Turkey as I wanted while the music pulsed my skull. If I thought about that, I wouldn’t think about later, kissing him in his car, when he panted his dragon-breath into my ear and across my eyelids. Or when, with the sun coming up, I trudged to my dorm and its fluorescent-bright, group bathroom, where I jammed two fingers deep into my mouth, crushing hard against the back of my tongue to make myself puke, the way to avoid hangovers, the way not to feel rotten the morning after.”
*A chapter in SILVER GIRL.
***
“Headache,” a chapter excerpt from the novel SILVER GIRL, in Works (of Fiction) In Progress [WIPs]
Suburban Chicago, 1982
The phone on the kitchen wall rang. Jess and I stared at it in surprise. Though we had been sharing this college apartment for two weeks already, we still didn’t feel as though we belonged here and the ringing phone seemed to emphasize exactly how out of place we were. “You answer,” she whispered. It was eleven AM, hardly a time for whispering, but I whispered back, “No, you,” and then we laughed….
***
Listen to me read “The Devil’s Daughter,” the prologue to SILVER GIRL. (First published in Midwestern Gothic.) About fifteen minutes. (Also, made by me on my phone, so let’s not expect too, too much!)
“My roommate arrived first, staking her claim. Probably someone told her to do it that way, her cum laude mother or Ivy League dad or an older sibling or cousin in college. I had no one telling me anything. So I didn’t know to take the overnight bus to Chicago from Iowa instead of the one arriving late in the afternoon, meaning when I unlocked the dorm room door I saw a fluffy comforter with bright poppies already arranged on the bed along the wall with the window, cracked open to grab the only breeze. Several dozen white plastic hangers holding blazers and skirts and blouses filled the closet with the door where F U wasn’t gouged into the wood….”
***
From “One True Thing,” short fiction, from The Rupture (formerly The Collagist)*
“…We were all young back then, or so it seemed to us. If there were old people—”old” meaning anyone older than us—at the MacBride Writers’ Conference in 1996, we didn’t notice. We were busy with ourselves, and no world existed beyond us, our egos, our writing, our dreams and hopes, our gossip. Some of us were on working scholarship to the conference as waiters, and some of us earned scholarships because our poetry was published in a literary journal deemed important, and some of us—though we were so, so young—had published our first book, which was the holy grail: publish a book. Those people were luckiest of all, coming to the writers’ conference on a fellowship, which was the golden ticket. None of us paid. Paying was what regular people did, not us. “We were obnoxious, toting bottles of crummy red wine into dinner and toasting ourselves in loud voices, clustering at the back of the room during craft lectures to lean and whisper in each other’s ears….”
*Included in the short story collection, THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST.
***
From “I Am the Widow,” short fiction, r.kv.r.y.*
“Just like at any movie or TV funeral, his casket gets put up front, set under specially focused lighting, parenthesized by yardstick-high sprays of white gladiolus. Plump velvet kneeler in front of him, velvet curtains behind. Top half of the box open, so we can see his face. If we want to see him dead, that is, if we want to look right at death. There are plenty ducking their heads, twisting necks around and staring up high into the ceiling or deep down through the carpeted floor. Not me. Right off, I grab hold of his hand, entwine my fingers around his, not because that feels so great but because it unnerves the people circling me. Hell yeah. I’m grabbing a dead man’s hand. I’m grabbing my dead husband’s hand. Maybe I won’t let go. Maybe I’m going crazy.”
*Included in the story collection, THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST.
***
From Hobart, “What I Could Buy,” a short story:*
“What I could buy with the insurance money they gave me when you died: “One Ferrari, red or black, assuming V-8 instead of V-12, assuming premium gas, assuming insurance, assuming no major breakdowns or repairs, assuming no super-long driving trips, assuming street parking, assuming ironic fuzzy dice to dangle off rear view mirror. Or: “Four separate world cruises, assuming 107 days at sea, assuming Queen Mary 2 on the Cunard Line, assuming supplement for a single room, assuming balcony, assuming one glass of wine per night, assuming no more than twelve land excursions as arranged by the cruise ship personnel, assuming winning at the casino, assuming internet access, assuming laundry service. Or: …”
*Included in the story collection, THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST.
***
From “Acquiescence,” flash fiction published in Shenandoah:*
“The body flew on a different plane, arriving in Detroit two days ago, at 7:37AM. She tracked its arrival online. Not a soldier or a famous politician, just her husband, age thirty, suddenly dead.”
*Included in the story collection, THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST.
***
”
“Ten Things,” short story, The Sun magazine:*
“He once compared you to an avocado. He was never good at saying what he meant in fancy ways. (You had a boyfriend in college who dedicated poems to you, one of which won a contest in the student literary magazine, but that boyfriend never compared you to anything as simple and real as an avocado.)”
*Included in the story collection, THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST.
***
From “what we see, or what we know,” short story, Great Jones Street [note: this story was written as part of THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST]
1983: Evanston, Illinois: Monday nights at Marcellino’s East got slow after Dante’s, a new sit-down with pitcher beer and cheap wine, opened on the other side of the el tracks, the side closer to campus. It was spring, and everyone crowded to the stone patio at Dante’s for eat-in pizza, forgetting that Marcellino’s take-out and delivery had sustained them just fine all winter. Fickle. Paul, who had sunk his family’s savings into starting Marcellino’s eight years ago, cut hours, so the high school boys only worked Thursdays and weekends, which meant no weed on Monday. On Monday, assistant manager Neil DeRosa manned the pizza ovens; Jay Schachtel — a Phi Psi — drove delivery; and Paul made a decision they all liked, not to can Kelly, the English major who answered phones, wrote up delivery tickets, and handled walk-ins….