Excerpts

Purple Heart "Can you feel that, Private?" Matt Duffy awoke to a tingling sensation in his foot. He lifted his head and took in the sight of a man in green scrubs standing at the bottom of his bed. The sensation in his foot, it seemed, had something to do with the man. Matt closed his eyes, let his head fell back on the pillow – and felt a terrible throbbing at the base of his skull. More

Sold In the village school we were taught to add, subtract, multiply and divide. The teacher gave us difficult problems, asking us to figure out how many baskets of rice a family would have to sell to buy a new water buffalo or how many lengths of fabric a mother would need to make a vest and pants for her husband and still have enough for a dress for her baby. I would chew on the ends of my braids while my mind whirred, desperate to come up with the answer that would spread a smile on her soft moon face. Here I do a different set of calculations. More

Cut You say it's up to me to do the talking. You lean forward, place a box of tissues in front of me, and your black leather chair groans like a living thing. Like the cow it used to be before somebody killed it and turned it into a chair in a shrink's office in a loonie bin. Your stockinged legs make a shushing sound as you cross them. "Can you remember how it started?" you say. I remember exactly... More

My Brother's Keeper When I walk in the den, my brother Jake's grabbing his stomach and laughing without making any noise and Andy Timmons is pointing at this kid I'd never seen before and snickering. The kid, who's wearing a T shirt that says "Pissing Off the Whole... More