John Lane

He never was much for sewing, but my dead father is back for an instant at the yard sale. He rummages through a box of old patterns stacked like corpses. He tosses them over his skinny shoulder into the yard. What is he after? What's so important do [...]

The man with the shotgun propped on his belly has work to get done, watches each man swing the bushax, hack with the slingblade, sumac and mullein falling before them. Cars whisper past a young prisoner with kinky blond hair. Reflections are the face [...]

In high school I lied about my dead father's death, said he died of a heart problem. I couldn't say the word suicide. But it was heart trouble that took him so low he couldn't come back up. He owned the ESSO on the main highway, Number One, from New [...]