—————

Flash Fiction Festival One, celebrating 2017's Flash Festival in Bath, England, includes my story "Plastic."

"At dinner she said that the mound of glistening shrimps on the white plate looked like tiny pink penises, impotent shriveled penises.

     He said nothing. 

     The translucent shucked shrimp shells reminded him of shards of plastic. . . ."

—————

New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2006, edited by Allan Gurganus, includes my story "How to Build a House."

"There is no plot to the house, no sequence of causally related events.  There is no order, no logical development. It yields no secrets to deconstruction. If there ever was a meaning to it, you can no longer express it. You build. All you are doing is creating an object distinct from the objects around it."

—————

Long Story Short: Flash Fiction by Sixty-five of North Carolina's Finest Writers, edited by Marianne Gingher, includes my story "Mexican Carwreck."

"Here is where: the slick wet curve off-camber, the blacktop pitted with patches and ruts, the yellow double line faded almost invisible. A ditch along either side; standing water stinking of rot and hot rubber and hogshit; dockweed, mullein, wild onion, a spray of tiny yellow flowers with faces turned up to the rain. Blue styrofoam Fillet-O-Fish. Rusted barbed wire. Skidmarks like screaming. A body face down in the ditch. Turn him over."

—————

This Is Where We Live: Short Stories by 26 Contemporary North Carolina Writers, edited my Michael McFee, includes my story "Across from the Motoheads."

"They’re at it again. From Gran’s screened-in porch we can see straight into their front yard, where amongst corroded junk and clumps of weeds a Harley hangs, chained ten feet up to an old oak branch. Rust-pitted, skeletal, like some strange carcass swinging dry in the wind, it’s their banner, their heraldic arms: here live the Motoheads. They stand outside in full view, large and hairy, troglodyte, popping beers and burning red meat over an open-pit fire—a brick-lined hole dug with much cursing in the early afternoon. Their chests are bare under sleeveless jeans jackets. They roar at each other not to park their bikes on the lawn. They park their bikes on the lawn."

—————

The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VII: North Carolina, edited by William Wright and Jesse Graves, includes two of my poems: "Tobacco Barns" and "Wind."

from TOBACCO BARNS

          . . . bleached by sun and rotted by rain, home

          to blacksnake, feral pig, farm cats,

          jumbled cultivators, tines, harrows, 

          rusting things that no one knows the name for . . .  

—————

My story "Background" is the leadoff piece in Racing Home: New Stories by Award-Winning North Carolina Writers.

"Her mistaken recognition weighs oddly on him. Not long ago on the courthouse sidewalk a persistent and maniacal bag lady had proclaimed him to be Jesus, had sworn she had seen him heal the blind. Connor had corrected her, had told her his name, had gone so far as to show her his unscarred palms. The old lady, betrayed, bitterly told him to forget it, but the encounter had haunted him; he had a sense that he'd misunderstood, that it was all metaphor, and perhaps he was oblivious to his own Christ-nature. This deal tonight had had the same quality, he thinks, a weird, addled kind of logic. For if what he believed was right—that everything was true—then maybe he was who she'd mistaken him for. No, he thinks, she's not crazy." 

—————

Kakalak 2013 features one of my poems, "Midnight at the Rehab Center."

from MIDNIGHT AT THE REHAB CENTER

          In the rehab center I go down

          to the nurses' station and ask Loreen—

          tired smile, blue eyes bloodshot—

          if she has anything for Granddaddy's pain. . . . 

—————

New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1987, edited by Shannon Ravenel, includes my story "Across from the Motoheads."

"They’re at it again. From Gran’s screened-in porch we can see straight into their front yard, where amongst corroded junk and clumps of weeds a Harley hangs, chained ten feet up to an old oak branch. Rust-pitted, skeletal, like some strange carcass swinging dry in the wind, it’s their banner, their heraldic arms: here live the Motoheads. They stand outside in full view, large and hairy, troglodyte, popping beers and burning red meat over an open-pit fire—a brick-lined hole dug with much cursing in the early afternoon. Their chests are bare under sleeveless jeans jackets. They roar at each other not to park their bikes on the lawn. They park their bikes on the lawn."

—————

New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1986, edited by Shannon Ravenel, includes my story "Wallwork."

"These are the streets you work: Lowery, Spunt, Cooter, Hood. Skinker, which all the natives call Skink. Acme Avenue. Limit Avenue. Pitt Street. Gravois, pronounce the S. The place you live, miles west, is called Earth City. Streets there were named by NASA. Neptune Place. Alan Shepard Circle. Andromeda Court. You explain often that you’re not making this up. Apollo Drive, Lunar Drive, Werner Von B Drive. Alpha Centuri Circle. . . ."