*

 How much are you getting paid to do this, he asks, a
crease in his forehead.

Enough to pay off my loans, I said as he begins to tattoo
the Coca-Colo logo across my face.

~ “Indentured”

These delectable shorts from Nancy Stohlman are sassy, sophisticated, sometimes sweetly naive, and always brilliantly ironic. From the woman who hugs inmates on death row and the sexy homunculus, to the pawned boyfriend, the missing penis, and the mermaid who is no longer a mermaid, we are scooped up and taken to the craziest, zaniest, most unimaginably strange places; and yet in each place you find human-ness… tender vulnerability, the need to please, or at least understand.

*

Do you feel old now? she asked.
I shrugged. Do you feel young?
We shared a soda as the Midwest rolled by.

~ “I Met My 20-Year Old Self in the Lounge Car of the Amtrak”

*

And then, of course, there is the fox… seductive, mysterious… the vulpes vulpes marking its territory with urine, its anal glands smelling of violets. Who can resist? Not you, if you read even one of the stories in this absolutely top-notch collection.Read original here