Jenny Stalter

Jenny Stalter is a writer and former private chef. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Typehouse Literary Magazine, Eunoia Review and Tiny Molecules. She received an honorable mention for the 2018 Anton Chekhov Prize for Very Short Fiction, and her story “Date with Crocodile Girl” is a 2020 Pushcart nominee. She lives in West Texas.

BEACH HOUSE by Jenny Stalter

Our house faces neither east nor west and sits in shadow. The tiny green house with the too much wicker. The tinted glass dishes full of seashells and tapestries accented with smooth beach glass. Oil paintings of seagulls. Mom really went for the beach look. Most people acquire a life over a lifetime, but it’s like she stopped in 1986. Stopped making a home, stopped making herself. The house smells like sour sweat and coconut rum. Mom, drunk on the couch as a permanent fixture, her robe hanging off the sofa, mouth open. I place a pillow under her head…

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