TSR Classics — TSR Online

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Posts tagged TSR Classics

The Abductions

“I’m scared you’re going to get caught out there. Not paying attention, not stopping for lights. Think of your abduction,” our father said, holding our shoulders as if he’d always feared God. We pulled up our pants and tucked in our skin. “Don’t stop for bleating lights,” he said again. Those lights paint the skin colors that aren’t ours.

We remember this in the backseat. Away from home. We are with friends, in their car full of smoke. Bleat, bleat. We cannot breathe. We are frozen with thoughts of better places to be. The lights pass us by. Everyone but us erupts in human laughter.

Rob TaylorTSRJuly 22, 2020FICTION, TSR Classics

lance to drain

what is a man
—but
blood and sack
pricks of light
gone with the water
gone with the fire

HAL Y. ZHANGTSRJuly 15, 2020POETRY, TSR Classics

Urumqi mon amour

I came to Xinjiang to see someone from before whom I anticipated I wouldn’t find. I’d read in a gawking travel publication that there was a single gay bar in Urumqi where the drag queens dress as Uyghur women in traditional outfits and spin like dervishes to poppy Central Asian music. Maybe he’d be there. But it wasn’t likely.

Massoud HayounTSRFebruary 5, 2020NONFICTION, TSR Classics

Muscle

The summer I turned sixteen, I slept with my rowing coach. It was the first time I had sex in the way it happens sometimes, as a surprise. We were at his younger brother’s funeral, my first boyfriend, then we were along the canal bank, on his suit jacket, me tightening my muscles around him.

Joe had his reasons, or didn’t. He reminded me enough of Mike, straight angles everywhere, cheekbones, rib bones, hips sharp. I needed to stop the loop in my head of Mike loping to the dock, four blades on his shoulder, and the impossible grace he displayed setting them down.

Karen SmyteTSRNovember 27, 2019TSR Classics, Short Short Contest Winner

Predator

Just after my thirteenth birthday I killed a mailman. It was an accident as much as anything is an accident. There were no weapons and I never planned it and feel bad about it still, but it happened, and I watched it happen, and after it happened it seemed like something I would always be waiting to have happen again.

Nini BerndtTSROctober 16, 2019FICTION, TSR Classics

Bullet Catcher

I made a bit of a joke about it. “Beautiful country over there,” which was my way of seeing if he was telling the truth. Because, when you’re talking one veteran to another, you never say, “What a shithole that place was,” or “I hate that fucking place.” You say, “Beautiful country.” “Real vacationland.”

Jon ChopanTSRJuly 24, 2019FICTION, TSR Classics

I Saw the Sunshine, Melting

I Saw the Sunshine, Melting

Beneath the old sarcophagus and inside the core of Reactor 4, there remains a black, molten mass. The mass has a name, though I’m not sure who named it. (Only a few people have seen it in person, and it’s unclear if any of them are still alive.) They call this black, molten mass the Elephant’s Foot, and if you look at it for more than five minutes, it may be the last thing you see. The blackened lava has solidified in parts and formed rings, loops like the bark of a tree. At its center, the Elephant’s Foot continues to burn. Thirty years later the wolves and deer and wild boars have returned, the sun is scorching, the mushrooms are scraping their fresh caps against the sky, oh my, oh my! And the core is still melting.

Sonya BilocerkowyczScott TSR SullivanMay 29, 2019NONFICTION, TSR Classics

Equivalent

Every couple of months, the seller arrived unannounced to pick up something he had left behind: a wall phone in the den, canoe mounts in the shed. The buyer allowed him to take what he wanted, then asked him for help with a difficult chore.

Amy HempelScott TSR SullivanApril 17, 2019FICTION, TSR Classics

Thirteen Stages of Grief

Blacking Out

I remember not realizing I was only wearing underwear and a T-shirt until I caught one of the responding police officers checking out my ass. White granny-panties with pink polka dots and a man’s neon green tank top with Kennebunk Maine written across the chest. We went there every Fourth of July. I’d bought the shirt only a month earlier. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to wear it again.

Rose BurkeScott TSR SullivanDecember 12, 2018NONFICTION, TSR Classics

The Polish Veterinarian

—Mother won’t have him in the house. Malodorous little rodent, she calls him. Have to keep you here at the station, don’t I? You’re not a rodent, he said into the ferret’s fur. You munch on rodents for breakfast. We’ll never have rats in our jail, will we?

Sheena CookScott TSR SullivanAugust 29, 2018FICTION, TSR Classics

Dear Mr. Roth

Oh Mr. Roth—how to get old. How to come to terms with the inevitable. With our own short-sightedness. How not to feel regret? And where to find solace? In the moment, right? In the playing of each moment as if it were our last. Except that’s no way to live—though it might be a way to make art: and if you’re an artist, how to separate one from the other?

Dinah LenneyScott TSR SullivanAugust 8, 2018FICTION, TSR Classics

Method Acting

“So,” Tad said, “Did you see the aliens?”

Constance and Bill looked startled. As if this was the question that made the evening strange.

Although I was grateful to Tad for raising the subject, I also resented him. I should have thought of it. I placed my clog directly atop his sneakered foot and pressed down gently.

Susan Scarf MerrellScott TSR SullivanJune 20, 2018FICTION, TSR Classics

The Desk Fans

On the table behind him rusty Seagulls wait their turn. Silver Swans perch on the bookshelf. Sidewinders lie motionless on the floor. After breakfast he opens the window and sits down with a turn-of-the-century Peerless—steel, non-oscillating, thin spokes curved like heat waves.

Jody BrooksScott TSR SullivanSeptember 6, 2017TSR Classics, FICTION

Looking for a Friend in a Crowd of Arriving Passengers: A Sonnet

Not John Whalen.
Not John Whalen.
Not John Whalen.
Not John Whalen.

Billy CollinsScott TSR SullivanAugust 9, 2017TSR Classics, POETRY

The Haunting

I always believed in blind dates, especially when arranged by my kid brother. He's the tall, good-looking one surrounded by beautiful people in the ad agency where he runs their biggest accounts. Then there's me, the bookworm—the divorced woman with two young boys holding down a job while juggling joint custody rules. You can image how little time I had to meet men.

Marilyn GottliebScott TSR SullivanAugust 2, 2017TSR Classics, NONFICTION

Brand Values

The changes to the restrooms were similarly striking. In the men’s room, a woman’s sultry voice trilled out of an overhead speaker: “I love my luxe, luxe luxury brand. Sexy. Beautiful. Don’t you? Don’t you love me?” Then she started to scream.

Or maybe laugh. Leonard wasn’t sure.

Emily BucklerScott TSR SullivanJuly 19, 2017TSR Classics, FICTION

Thy Neighbour's Goods

Across the street from thy house, the mouth of thy neighbour’s garage yawneth open, revealing the full measure of thy neighbour’s goods. Thy neighbor doth labor singly, lading a white U-Haul pickup truck. His wife hath driven him out of his home on account of his sin.

D. A. HosekScott TSR SullivanJuly 12, 2017TSR Classics, FICTION

Whelk Shell

Mud-colored outside,
sinuous, shaped
like an overgrown comma,

with gaps that reveal
a pearly spiral
like the brooch

my mother kept in velvet
and never wore.

Grace SchulmanScott TSR SullivanJuly 5, 2017TSR Classics, POETRY