The older boy crouched to lay something on the ground. The little one, stepping aside, gave Maria space enough to see something small and furry on the grass. Brown. Was it a rabbit? A cat?

— “Silencing,” fiction in World Literature Today

But they were silent birds with sharp beaks, and she felt herself dumb suddenly. Their knowledge sat like an amulet in their chests, and she waited, mute, scared, defective in her lack of knowing.

— “Peephole,” fiction in The Baltimore Review

His even tone with Pablo confirms that he was casting the blame on me. I am left in shock, as if every object inside me has been flung up and hovers in mid-air.

— “Those Who Point Like Arrows,” fiction in Terrain

We’d walk the rows and pluck pea pods into bowls and carry them to the driveway, which sat shaded by that hour, and shuck them with our fingers into a pot.

— “Weekend House,” nonfiction in World Literature Today

Outside, Sarajevo stretched wide. A geography of peaks and dips and lights. And the same landscape swelled up to meet it from deep within my past.

— “Geography of Peaks and Dips and Lights,” nonfiction in The Rumpus

Loneliness spread through her like liquid through a napkin.

— “Family in the Foreign World,” fiction in Epiphany

Now they play chess on their thrifted chairs with ghosts, in between runs to the store for toilet paper and eggs, and she always wins, and he always loses.

— “The Docents Invite Two Mediums to the Governor’s Historic Estate,” fiction in Midway Journal

I walked the night streets alone and looked at stars and thought about the nature of gravity and the brevity of life and about how all the benches and trees looked like stage props when no one was around.

— “Soul Retrieval in the Southwest,” nonfiction in Hobart

He wishes someone who loved him were here. Daniel’s in the cabin, everyone else on land. Wind hits his head, and he remembers the olive jacket they left, in the frenzied trip to the airport, by the door to the house.

— “On the Lido Deck Before Sunrise,” poem in Witness

I marveled at how tiny we were, here, on our little planet. How tiny, and yet how much we each can host.

— “Multitude of Hosts,” nonfiction in Barnstorm