LIVING IN THE COUNTRY • by Chris Bruce
How a moose got into the cabin, I do not know. We’d been down to Rosa’s café for a hot bowl of chili verde on a cool night, and I could’ve sworn I closed the door on our way out.… Continue Reading
How a moose got into the cabin, I do not know. We’d been down to Rosa’s café for a hot bowl of chili verde on a cool night, and I could’ve sworn I closed the door on our way out.… Continue Reading
It didn’t snow this year, but it doesn’t matter. Mrs White (née Flynn) doesn’t like the snow anyway. It makes her joints flare up and she’s turning seventy next year, you know. She doesn’t need the bother. And anyway, the… Continue Reading
I “We get in, get the tree, get out,” says Dad. “Got it?”Football begins in less than two hours; my family is on the clock. II Marc points out that Christmas trees do not grow in Bethlehem. It would be… Continue Reading
“Grandma, did your son die?” I gasp at my six-year-old’s innocent question to my mom. We are outside on the patio, enjoying pasta salad and barbecue, lost in mundane conversation about swimming lessons and arranging who will pick up the… Continue Reading
The day started tense. Not what Marie wanted on her day off work. The family all knew that there was to be a “proper” Thanksgiving dinner. And then Dad said he was going to join the lads at Dave’s to… Continue Reading
I read an article recently about harp seals. How their mothers abandon them just twelve days after they’re born, left to the elements, floating on ice in the frigid ocean. Biologists say it teaches the seal pups survival, lessons of… Continue Reading
The smell of death isn’t death; it’s food. The smell wafts from the kitchen, permeates the hallway, living room, and dining room of the old colonial. It travels up the stairs in whiffs of almost tangible threads into the two… Continue Reading
Every time we get together we cook too much, and then we eat too much. Even though our parents did their best to try and teach us proper table manners, we hunch our backs, put our elbows on the table… Continue Reading
I watched her as much as she pretended not to watch me. My little sister. Wasn’t the youngest the baby? Wasn’t she supposed to be subject to our parents’ worries? Their touches of melancholy? I remember when she would beg… Continue Reading
We are hungry, so hungry we could eat the whole world. Everything smells like ketchup. We could eat the trees, we could eat the sun. The glass lights on the deck twinkle like little candy stars, and we could eat… Continue Reading