The Centripetal Force of Holding Hands by Matt Briggs WHEN PAT TOOK BOARDWALK, PARK PLACE WAS STILL IN PLAY. He couldn’t resist touting his slumlord skills. He would lock us in tenements at the edge of the Monopoly board so foul that he wouldn’t have to call the exterminator because not even vermin would live there. “I’ll charge you a fortune and use the cash to buy useless things like gourmet marshmallows to feed to the pigeons.

Depressions on the Moon by Matt Briggs ELISSA NEVER TOLD JASON ANYTHING. Rather Elissa’s texts became shorter and less frequent. At her peak, Elissa had been a three-times a day texter. She sent him a short note in the morning telling him something about her dreams. She had vivid and violent dreams. She dreamt she was a starling that had gone on a rampage against the squirrels in her neighborhood. It was a re-occurring dream and had become a running joke between them.

My Depakote Regimen by Matt Briggs A DEPAKOTE DREAM IS UNLIKE A PAXIL DREAM. It is unlike any of the dreams I don’t remember from before I began my chemical regimen. I don’t remember my old dreams exactly, but I know I had them. I would wake with a flash of something: a boat on a clear lake, the sound of a train on tracks. When I woke from my Depakote sleep, I woke with nothing.

A Higher Power by Matt Briggs MY WIFE MARTY WAS IN AL-ANON. Marty always took my with her on what I thought of as her meet-and-greets. Marty wasn’t trying to sell anything. She wasn’t running for office, but rather I figured she was looking for something about herself in these meetings. These were retired boozers like she was, and they had moved and assembled lives out of whatever was left of their health, of their marriages, families, out of their cars that were still sometimes banged up in inexplicable places because of the type of collisions you have when you are blacked out.

Gap in the Grid by Matt Briggs AT COSTCO, WHILE WAITING FOR MY TIRES TO BE FIXED, I went for a walk along the Green River. I am at the Tukwila CostCo on a road named after the warehouses. I am in the parking lot of an office park of small businesses in warehouses. A stand of cotton-wood trees surrounds a pond that at first, I take to be an oxbow of the Green River, a slough of wet land.

New story in Pacifica Literary Review The orbital spiders began to go to work in late August. The mornings still held the warmth of the previous night. The moths came out of the marshland across the street. They hit the deck lamp at the back of the house. When I walked the dog to the elementary playground and back at dusk, I could see the moths arrive like a snowfall in reverse.

Des Moines Creek Ghost Story Along the sleepy banks of Poverty Bay, I wouldn’t know that it was so. Russian and Vietnamese men fished for squid from the pier, and I walked into the rehabilitated forest, dripping and silent under the occasional squall of an airplane headed toward Sea Tac airport. I had been taking this walk since the park reopened a few years ago. I found the forest peaceful. Mushrooms and moss grew from the sides of the trees.

A Curtain of Darkness by Matt Briggs I woke on the Sunday before my work week began after a week off during the Fourth of July with a massive shape in my left eye. It appeared like a hole in my field of vision. That is, it appeared like something that wasn’t. As I stared at it, I could see through it like a slip of cellophane stained with spaghetti grease.

An Education in Lies by Matt Briggs When I returned from Basic Training, I started looking for classes to take in writing. I was just past the registration date for the University of Washington Experimental College where there was a short story class taught by Richard Berman, M.F.A. The title at the end of his name, tacked on like P.H.D. seemed to indicate a professional status as a writer, certification by a board that confirmed his abilities as a genuine writer, although I was unsure what it meant.

Genre of Silence by Matt Briggs My Father and the Genre of Silence My father died in 2011 and left behind him a rebuilt red Chevy Super Impala convertible 1968, a couple of houses, and about a half dozen shoeboxes full of several thousand photographs of the Central Cascade mountains. I hadn’t spoken with my father for five years before his death. Even before even though my dad had a lot to say and said it, his conversation was hardly intimate or even interactive.