Author: jimlatham

I’ve shot a lot of dogs. I’m not proud of it, mind you, but when the bombs fell and the EMPs pulsed, well, that changed a lot of things. Dogs not trusting humans anymore being a big one. They kept to their own kind. Packed up. And when they got hungry, they went hunting. Hunting…

Sorry about the footprints. And the claw marks. I was trying to wipe my feet on that welcome mat, and, well, bears and houses don’t mix well. I have to say, though, I like hardwoods better as living trees than as floorboards. That said, I really like your pen. Sleek, but with some heft to it.…

It feels like three a.m., but maybe it’s not that late. Faint snores float room to room through the cool night air. The rain that started while I bought bread at the last open market stall still falls on the glass four floors above me. Wooden stairs creak and settle. Bedsprings disturbed by restless sleepers…

Mama told me a long time ago Colton would get the trailer and the property. I’m fine with it. He was good to me, even though I wasn’t his, and he paid most of the mortgage, and I don’t need or want a doublewide twenty miles outside Batavia, New York, with sketchy plumbing and a…

In the beginning, an old story goes, there was nothing. The Earth was waste and void, and darkness moved over the ocean. Before long, there was light. Soon after that, the scene shifts to a garden inhabited by a man, a woman, and a talking snake.  It wasn’t long before there was a misunderstanding. The…

My Spanish-speaking friend Luz queries the difference between roost and nest. I explain the divergent sleeping arrangements of chickens and songbirds. Luz asks if she can ask another question. Go nuts, I say. A pause, a wrinkled brow. Go nueces? Walnuts? I can’t explain why hard-shelled edible kernels connote extreme excitement or anger or why that’s also…

A bobcat freezes at the edge of a clearing, its head cocked, its yellow eyes drawn by sunlight glinting on a gold ring encircling a finger. A breeze carrying the smells of meltwater trickling in the creek bed and sap working its way up the birch trees ruffles the tufts of black hair on the…

Elena scanned the front yard. Tank and Betty, leashed to the fence, Ted the Fish in his bowl, and the folder of important paperwork. No cat. No Frito Pie. Frito Pie always came when Elena called. Always. But not today. Not while the house filled with smoke. Sirens wailed. Getting closer. Elena had gotten the…

Ollie, in the middle of the street, balanced on one leg for what must have been his twentieth selfie with a llama wearing a multicolored knitted cap. Pen, at the bar, sipped her pisco sour and pondered levels of stupidity. First, you have absentminded or merely dumb mistakes. Embarrassing, but understandable in the day-to-day rush.…

Zach didn’t want to shoot the moose.  April wanted revenge. She had named the moose Stew after he munched her broccoli and kale down to nubbins and trampled the rest of her garden. She wanted his head on the wall and his steaks on the grill. The whir of April’s sewing machine faltered and stopped.“Zach!”…