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"Burn the House Down" in Indiana Review, Volume 29.2

The jail had been scheduled to be demolished since early summer, but with each problem during the new building's construction, demolition of the old one was delayed. People around here weren't talking much about this. People in town never really complained or showed public emotion about anything, anyway. They only said the new jail was up on Air Force Hill, and that it was bigger, and that we'd be able to see it from town. And people were right. If you stood in a certain place, like next to the old jail, and looked between a couple houses, you could see a galvanized tin roof where there used to be nothing but trees, four miles out on the only road. This was just above the city dump--the place where the old jail would be thrown. And of the seven hundred people who lived here, if you asked any one of them about the old jail I bet none would say they were sad to see it torn down. It was a busted, unpainted wood house that the police had been using for many years. It sat next to the post office right on Main Road, right in the middle of town, rotting. You couldn't do anything around here without passing the place two or three times a day. And the only thing that would make everyone happier than seeing it destroyed, would be not needing a jail at all.

 

"The Thing in Her Thumb" in Redivider issue 5.2

Kiana and my mom became friends the first time they met. They bonded over something called seal finger. Kiana stopped by our house and walked around the little place, looking at each decoration and family picture, even the stereo, as if everything were exotic. Mom apologized for the mess. She said we hadn't finished unpacking yet. It was Mom who had the seal finger, and I guessed Kiana knew the cure...or at least, a relief.
Kiana pointed to a living room wall, said, "I've always wanted a map of the world." She had these strikingly high cheekbones, chiseled under mysterious, almost sad eyes--a face with the strength and danger of hundred-foot cliff.

 

Podcast reading of "Go at Shaktoolik" and interview with The Missouri Review 6.25.07

"Go at Shaktoolik" in The Missouri Review, Volume 29, #3

Sometimes the smoke in the village was so thick, if you threw a rock you couldn’t see it land. Other times there was just a haze. That week there had been forest fires twenty-five miles inland from Unalakleet. East winds had suffocated everything, putting some jobs on hold and even closing the school for a few days. And since all the planes were grounded—nothing was coming or leaving—Go-Boy told me another week of this and AC Store would run out of food. But he laughed, and said, “We got fifteen bags of French fries in our freezer.” I checked, and we did.

Later that week, when the smoke had started to thin, Go-Boy left me a yellow note stuck to the on/off button of our tv—MEET ME BY THE BOAT, TWO O’CLOCK. WE’RE SPREADING GOOD NEWS. There was a chance that Go would maybe give me the money I needed to move back home, so I didn’t want to say no to anything.

 

"Humpies" on AGNI online 6.19.06

From Minus Spine:
"It seems like so much of good writing takes what is unknown and makes familiar or alternatively takes what is familiar and makes it unique. A story from Agni Online, "Humpies" by Mattox Roesch, does both by recreating a bizarre family drama within a small town fishing community in Alaska. There’s a touch of the familiar in the provinciality, the teenage reluctance, and the fractured families, which is then injected with idiosyncrasies like the nearly biblical arrival of the “humpies” and the unthinkable crime that a father commits. What really stood out in this short story was the way it suggests a whole past — an entire family history of out which comes a gang-banging brother, a deserted father and a concerned but aloof mother — through subtle, whispered details."