Jim Wyatt

Publications

"Snares" (as James W. Wyatt)
The Greensboro Review 81, Spring 2007
Winner of the Robert Watson Literary Prize for Fiction, Pushcart Prize nominee

Gordon reached across the jumble of plates for the bottle of raki. He'd lost track of the conversation around him. The taverna sat high on a hill, its balcony overlooking the Sea of Marmara, but even at a height the smell of murky water and dead fish reached his nostrils. Citronella candles flickered on the tables. Gordon filled the bottom of his glass with the aniseed liqueur and then splashed in mineral water. He swirled the glass in his hand and watched the mixture cloud. How did it happen? How did two clear liquids combine to form a hazy one?
So many things had become unclear. Three weeks ago he'd been in Missouri; now he was in Turkey, drinking late at night, no longer ensnared by thoughts of wife or child.


"Adult Education"
River Styx 75 (2007)
Pushcart Prize nominee

"We'd never work in children's television again," I say.
"That's the beauty part."
"It would be like Pee Wee Herman getting caught with his dick in his hand. It would be the end."


"Pi Day"
forthcoming in News from the Republic of Letters No. 18

Last night Tierney celebrated his fiftieth birthday, not alone, but in the company of strangers. He spent a long night in a lokanta in central Istanbul, taking drags off a communal narghile, drinking, and arguing with a group of tourists about whether or not Islam is a religion of the sword. This morning Tierney woke with the licorice smell of raki exuding from his pores, a rattle in his chest from the sweet, apple-flavored tobacco, and the conviction that someone must have trepanned his skull without anesthesia.


"Shakesteer's"
Cimarron Review162, Winter 2008

All my children are named after characters from Shakespeare. Toby was my first, named after Sir Toby Belch. He's twenty-six. Cordelia, named after Lear's faithful daughter, is twenty. And Horatio is ten months.
Zoe, my new wife and Horatio's mother, is also twenty-six, which sometimes sounds a little sick to me, too.


"In the Middle" (as James Wyatt)
Great River Review 46, Spring/Summer 2007

"Brett, it's no joke. I think he's greeking those boys."
I want to defend Drake, but it's difficult to stand up to Tierney. "You're wrong about him," I say after a moment. "He's a really good teacher. He loves kids."
"That's what I'm afraid of."