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New Oxford Review, Jan-Feb 2023

an ample tip

"Instead of their original destination, they drove downtown and ate lunch at a fancy burger joint. He felt good — joy, even. The portions were generous; the mood was right. He left an ample tip."

~~ from "An Amazing Turn" by Alex Kudera

shack jobs

"'Shack jobs' is how the poet Charles Bukowski described live-in lovers. He wasn’t such a primitive, but early on he felt the lack of space. There were two bedrooms, and he more or less took one. He stayed in there as much as he could."

~~ from "An Amazing Turn" by Alex Kudera

swatting a fuzzy green ball

"Now, years later, he recognized that with a child on the way, this would elude him — enough money to avoid worry. To feel secure and at peace. And he’d certainly never finish writing that book. No, sir. From now on, his life would be a working one. He would scramble for dollars. Get a kid through college? He’d probably never have enough. No weekday mornings and afternoons on tennis courts. That much was assured. He wouldn’t be wasting his time swatting a fuzzy green ball."

~~ from "An Amazing Turn" by Alex Kudera

It could all go wrong.

"And then he thought of what could go wrong — the child could fall off a rollercoaster or drown in a lake. Get hit in the head by a ball in a Little League game and suffer irreversible brain damage. Or be a complainer — at his side to criticize his every move — or have a learning disability or autism. They could do it all wrong; they could spoil their child — buy too much stuff, or the wrong stuff — all the electronics that ruin a kid. As an adult — into his or her 30s — his offspring could call up to whine and plead for money. Or could get killed in a bar — an innocent sipping cocktails in a lawless country — or, worse, kidnapped by aliens from outer space. They would beam down and sweep away his child, who would be disappeared as if America were Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China. It could all go wrong."

~~ from "An Amazing Turn" by Alex Kudera

An Amazing Turn

I'm grateful that the New Oxford Review published "An Amazing Turn."