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the lanternflies arrived the year before, on a cord of imported wood to a jobsite in berks county. within a month they had spread 100 miles in all directions. they lay their dried up bubblegum egg masses onto almost any surface (tree trunks, teslas, trash cans) and hatch to nymph to adult changing colors from black with white dots to red with white dots to ugly grey with wings that when spread show a beautiful pattern of white black and red. their favorite thing to eat is trees. they swarm and suck the sap and leave behind their honeydew, inviting

All of my departures have introduced me to new versions of myself but I’m beginning to resent the idea that there is still so much left to become. I am hoping crossing borders will show me what love has yet to grant me: freedom.  I arrive in New Mexico hoping to better acquaint myself with service and solitude, to become more discerning and lighthearted. The farm is in a town checkerboarded between reservations and gas stations. Everything here is brown and low to the ground. The adobe houses look like they have been pushed gently down into the earth by

The dad is test driving a truck from a used car dealership in order to pick up a refrigerator he found on Craigslist. He tells the salesman, “I need to show it to my wife,” and takes the keys and revs the engine and he flashes the grin he saves special for when he’s fucking someone over.  The salesman smiles back and it’s the same kind of smile. Practiced. The muscles taut. A smile built for marathons.  They’re having themselves a little smile off through the truck’s open window, smiling and smiling, until the son climbs into the passenger seat

The barmaid at Flanagan’s saw George come in and headed to meet him at his regular table. “How was your day, George?” she asked. “It was good, thank you. How was yours, Tammy?” “Mine too. You remember me mentioning my son having his heart set on being a baseball player despite being small and not terribly athletic?” “Yes?” “He told me he was the only one in his class to solve an algebra problem.” “Good for him,” George said. “Then he said, I kinda like algebra. He said this as if he was embarrassed to admit it, like telling me

My cinematic education started pretty early. My mom introduced me to Humphrey Bogart films and my dad to the Marx Brothers and Elvira’s Movie Macabre all before I was a teenager. Later, I would attend Steve Byrd’s Basement School of Cinematic History (that consisted of a solid wall of VHS tapes from floor to ceiling and even laser discs) and John Schloman’s Arthouse Academy (that mostly involved traveling to the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland). During this same time, a number of my friends and I regularly went to The Rocky Horror Picture Show and then started a New Year’s

1. About a week before the deer trouble starts, the mayor of Westerntown is sitting with his wife in a swinging loveseat on their patio, and their three kids, the two boys, who are four and six, and the girl, who’s almost two, are playing. The two boys are in the sandbox that’s in the middle of the yard, building sandcastles, and the girl is pushing a fire truck around on a blanket that’s been spread out on the ground next to where the mayor and his wife are sitting.  As the mayor and his wife relax and their kids

“How’s your night going?” the man asked.  Mary looked into his eyes—his deep brown eyes, beautiful by all objective standards—and knew they were the eyes of a liar. He didn’t mean “Having a good night?” or even “Having a horrible night?”; he meant, “Are you willing to tolerate my attention, and thus sustain my sexual fantasies about you, for the duration of this elevator ride?” “Amazing,” Mary answered. She wasn’t leading him on; she was setting him up.  He grinned, falling into her trap. “Oh? You on a winning streak?” “No, but my boyfriend is.” There it was, as if

Michael Seymour Blake is just some person with a nice butt in Queens, NY.

For many years, so many we have lost count, a Stairmaster has occupied this room, an unsightly apparatus left to gather dust after a (short-lived) period of committed use, its panels and planks fading in the sun, the curtains on the window it faces left open as often as not by the owner of this room and the many adjoining rooms. The window once overlooked a sycamore tree, but it was chopped down by sullen men in gray jackets who arrived early one morning before the first snowfall of the waning year.  We were not expecting this uproar, nor could

Every spring, the inimitable Sam Berman gathers the finest writers in the land, and me, for the StoryFort Festival in Boise, Idaho. One of the writers who made the strongest impression on me at the 2025 festival was Drew Buxton. After one of his readings, I pinned him in a corner and bombarded him with questions about his work-in-progress, a novel titled Daytona Teddy Riggs (Hub City Press, 2026). It’s about a promising football star who gets himself kicked off his college team and then pursues the World’s Strongest Man title. To say I was excited about the prospect of