Faculty member Kevin “Mc” McIlvoy’s short story “19th and Minnesota” appears in the August issue of pif magazine.

He was seeing things.  His speech was incoherent.  The spans, the beams, the eyebars of memory had weakened, and he had forgotten most of the crucial components of lying down, waking up, walking out, coming home. He and his grandchild wobbled up the street of cars parked nose-down by the tens of thousands, their auto-asses going right up the sky over the bay. Tens and tens of thousands of hills, and, clearing the hilltops, throngs of dog-owners, two by two, holding Starbucks under their chins and bagged dog-shit mid-chest, short nylon leashes on their wrists.  Broom-sweep gusts of wind made the pavement shimmers jitter, and creased the dogs in their stylish coats.

When he saw, when she saw the cuffs of his pants float back, they both pitched forward. She felt, he thought a bird calling in the trees resembled something gone that had returned. He thought, she felt the sleepy drooliness of having a head as soft as the places upon which it rested...[Keep Reading]…

Mc is the author of the story collection The Complete History of New Mexico (2004, Graywolf Press).