Kenyon Review, Spring 2024

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The following document was discovered in the papers of ANDREW R. ADAMS, who died peacefully at his home in Portland, Maine, on April 15, 2052, at the age of ninety, of natural causes. His sister found the document on his desk, where it appeared Adams had been working on it at the time of his death.

The JOURNAL is publishing the document exactly as it was found. — Ed.

Boston Review, July 2023

I walked to a bookstore with tall windows looking out on the street. A few guys wandered through the stacks, occasionally rifling through the pages of some book. I looked through a book on Watergate and stood next to a guy who was pretending to study a book about Vietnam.

“Hey,” he said, looking over at me. “Can I ask you something? Are you Canadian?”

I looked up from the book and laughed. His face relaxed.

It was a silly game. When you weren’t sure if a guy was gay, you asked if he was Canadian. If he said yes, then you knew. The straight ones always looked puzzled, told you they were American, and gave you their whole life history.

Catamaran Literary Reader, Summer 2023

We didn’t budge as a cartoon Tinker Bell, delicate as a butterfly, splashed patches of different colors across the TV screen with her wand. Or at least it was nice to imagine they were different. On our black-and-white TV, we couldn’t really tell. After Tinker Bell left the screen, Disneyland appeared—the spinning teacups ride, the silver monorail, and Mickey Mouse waving to the camera. Walt Disney himself surveyed the scene like a god. Then those images fell away, the music swelled, and a castle emerged from the mist. And arching over the castle was a rainbow, each band of color simply a different shade of gray.

Beloit Fiction Journal, Spring 2022

I assumed Walter was just going to prescribe some expensive new pill for me to take, along with all the others, so I was shocked when he said I needed that procedure where they thread a wire from your crotch up to your heart and bust up anything they find along the way. The one with “balloon” in the name, so it sounded like a toy for a child’s birthday party.