I’m getting’ too porky for vines, Jack grumbles as he massages his sore, climb-cramped calves. His fleshy fingers riffle the story book, and he finds himself in the thick of a forest. Creak of trees, belch of toads. Birds dead from moldy bread crumbs line the path he trudges down. Flicks of lizard tails and tongues point the way. At road’s end, a gingerbread cottage festooned with pinwheels and sweets. Barbecue-scented smoke wafts around him.…

We fill up our super soakers with tuna oil and water, the canned fish smell rubbing into our brown and gold skin, marking us. We talked ourselves out of using chili pepper water, one of us understanding what pepper spray could do. We pile into the back of our friends' salt-rusted trucks, casually sit, our free hands hanging over the lip of the bed, an invisible cigarette we can’t afford, dangling from our fingertips. We…

A rainbow-knit cap covers her patchy scalp, but she can still turn men to stone.  She adopts two puppies from the shelter and buys green bananas. Defiance is a glamour she wields like the venom of that flat rattlesnake—caught in the hay baler—that she named Heirloom and promised to will to her favorite child. She dozes in the front yard, half-dreaming the traffic. Sometimes she’ll clock a driver, pull off her cap, cross her eyes,…

After that, a grumble of ground and sky, and a scumble of clouds spreads a dull cast across our land. We cross checkpoints, move again, our elders lowing like cattle on the way to slaughter till, later, or sooner, we lower them into alien earth. In our new homes, we dim lights and expectations. Mornings are the harshest, the loudspeakers so shrill, their calls for drudgery and praise. We sleep in or lay low, swaddle…

He's hunting for a new version of hell. Can't you be satisfied with the one you've got? says his wife. The brain needs novelty, he replies. I need something different. Everyone’s got a pointy-headed brother, a cactus that won't bloom, a seven-year itch that makes you sweat. She says, Tell me about it, twisting her ring and watching the cumulous-riddled blue move over their car. How much sky can clouds occupy anyway? How many circles…

Psychic number seventeen says, Stop crowing about it and do something. You pluck and flutter while your mother sits on a stool with a pincushion readying you for prom. Your parents match you with Preacher’s son, Leonard. At the dance he drinks spiked punch and vomits on your silky dress. You place seventh for Prom Queen. The winner dances with Leonard. You call the Hotline, and psychic number four says, Virgo? You received the Aquarius…