Kate Ryan

“You are the naked girl on horse, yes?” he said, approaching her table from across the café patio.

My parents got the idea they’d send me to stay at my grandparents’ house in Florida for a week. I think my mother needed a week to herself.

Like booster engines emptied of fuel, my limbs become disposable, useless tanks as the blood rushes from them.

He thought I was mad, but in an artistic way; I thought he was horny all the time, but in an artistic way.

12:48 AM. Why would someone schedule an exorcism for the middle of a weeknight?

One crawled up the side of the bag and opened her wings, a hardtop convertible with legs.

I saw my old babysitter at a women’s wrestling cage match.

Writing simply does for me what long walks do for small dogs; it makes me tired and happy.

One of my biggest fears is having a random stranger ask me, "how it’s going?" They might as well ask if I’d like to step into their van and get murdered.

A bloated mother in her polka dot one-piece gnaws on a corndog while reading the romantic pulp she picked up on her way out of the supermarket . . .