by Richard Hoffman…

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” The fat man is yelling at a large red Mercury backing toward the boy who’s standing frozen with the shopping cart. The windows on the Mercury are down, and the music is loud. The car is shining; even the tailpipes are polished. It stops, rocking; the driver has slammed the brake.

Read the whole tooth-decaying story…

Richard Hoffman is author of the memoirs Half the House, Love & Fury, and the winner of the 2006 Barrow Street Press Poetry Prize. A former Chair of PEN New England, he is Senior Writer in Residence at Emerson College. Find out more about Richard at RichardHoffman.org.