Eight authors write about loss and its impacts — their stories are painful and funny, despairing and hopeful, violent and tender, provocative and thought provoking, ordinary and extraordinary.
• Ghost Mother
“I remember when I was alive, and I happened to saunter by a mirror as I was eating a perfect pear with freckles of ripeness, the image of my mother might float up underneath my face, for a moment making mine wavery and watery....”
• Leaving Lake Baikal
“It was different, traveling with a woman—one he had brought with him rather than picked up. He was responsible for bringing her back, making sure she was safe even when he felt like being alone....”
• Getting in the Car
“... new details were constantly being uncovered: there was a witness, the gun was in her mouth before the end, she was thrown out and perhaps lived for awhile....”
• In Northern Wisconsin, a Yellow Bus Is Reborn
“They decide to open a business. Work for themselves. They’ve been downsized: their jobs outsourced to a country they cannot find on a map....”
• Penile Bone
“There are reasons why I didn’t contact Sherii for twenty years. For one, I thought she was dead....”
• Zack Time
“The Suicide Hotline shift ends early enough that Ian gets home at five in the morning, and Zack is waiting, t-shirt on backwards. He is three; every five in the morning is Zack time....”
• The Company of Strangers
“Teresa storms one way down Bourbon Street and I go the other, my hands balled into fists. She thinks it’s cool to get drunk when she’s never been to New Orleans before, she’s never squatted....”
• Deer Collage
“...he thought about the piece of deer and the little mushroom caps of bone that seemed to sprout from the branch of fawn-colored hair. Shadow had been a hundred yards ahead, deep in her old-dog memories....”
• First Recompense (Parts I & II)
“She stood on the roof of the Yadin Memorial Center. Passers-by saw her first. Others began pulling cars over, getting out, and crossing the lawn to stare up at her. What the hell was she doing up there? How had she gotten up there? ....”
• Daddy’s Bundle
“Dodo’s letters to her were dark with forebodings about her faithlessness. She became so unhappy when she received them that she decided to terminate the engagement....”
The editor of Loss is Marko Fong.
Download a pdf of the entire chapbook HERE.