FALSE STARTS
Writing this year was all False Starts and Premature Finishes. I could not find a character to tell a story. I could not find the story. Forget setting. Well, maybe not. So, I resort to the age-old plot:...
The real estate agent texted me to say the sofa wouldn’t fit through the front door, so the clean-out crew just left it. One of its legs gouged the doorframe, then gave one of the auction guys a splinter...
Phinn took a sip of rye. He wasn’t inclined toward hard spirits but he hoped it would quiet his thoughts, blunt his worries. He wanted to go out but the snow would make it difficult, if not impossible. Still,...
“Oh, and one more thing, Rabbi. One of my sons wants some of the cremains.”
The rabbi eyed Lillian Diamond’s two sons. Which one wanted them? No need to ask. It would be the younger one. The older ones were...
Where I worked was a B & B, trying to be European, but hopelessly American, surrounded by rangy sunflowers which looked like weeds that were pretty. Behind them was the small two-story lonely-white B & B, with its old...
Bocas Del Toro, Panama 1931
In the house where Mama got sick, we five children, all under the age of twelve, waited for our fathers. Mama was a troupe singer and dancer. Dancer headwrap and dancer feet. Dancer fingers and...
Dad never liked Mum's dog, but he only killed it by accident. He hit it with the car in our driveway, just as we got back home from football practice. He was telling me about the Dutch team in...
April 15th, 1832
On the second day of our anchorage at the mouth of the Rio Santa Cruz, I led a party of sailors up to the summit of the hill where I’d stumbled upon an Indian grave. Two large...
Gifted Sister
My oldest sister is gifted. When things break, she fixes them. Though often they still don’t work, our parents beam with pride. Sometimes our gifted sister breaks things just to fix them. And our parents beam with pride...
Pangyrus is delighted to feature both a story by the esteemed author E.C. Osondu and a video interview that the author had with Pangyrus Senior Fiction Editor Anne Bernays and Associate Fiction Editor Indu Guzman. The story ("Memory Store")...
The goat was the tricky bit.
The bath had been easy. Her maid hadn’t even thought the request strange.
“The mistress were only brush and petals last May Day,” the maid had said to the cook. “What’s a bath by the...
I wasn't supposed to be in Beirut in December 1993. I certainly wasn't supposed to be in a hotel cafe, drinking thick coffee while a dust storm raged outside. I should have been setting up a stall at the...