Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Loss Detector
    The Loss Detector
    The Loss Detector
    Ebook49 pages41 minutes

    The Loss Detector

    By Meg Pokrass

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Set in coastal California, The Loss Detector is a funny/sad portrait of teenage blues and of a small, transplanted family of non-conformists. The flawed but lovable characters in Meg Pokrass' novella remind us of how the world's most beautiful places are not always the easiest in which to thrive. Moments of giddy, perceived freedom set against resignation dot the narrative in such a way that will leave you changed. 
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBamboo Dart Press
    Release dateOct 15, 2020
    ISBN9781947240049
    The Loss Detector

    Read more from Meg Pokrass

    Related to The Loss Detector

    Related ebooks

    Short Stories For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry

      Feb 6, 2024

      Bang out hundreds of pages of rhyming couplets about something other than your identity or your perceptions, and you, too, will likely fall out of love with lyric poetry. The post Falling Out of Love with Lyric Poetry appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Where To Start With Louise Glück, Winner Of The 2020 Nobel Prize In Literature

      Oct 14, 2020

      The Swedish Academy has awarded this year's Nobel Prize in literature to Louise Gluck, a former U.S. poet laureate. The 16th woman to win the prestigious prize and the first American woman since Toni Morrison in 1993, Gluck is the author of 12 poetry

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Time Is Now

      Aug 18, 2021

      Suggested Reading: What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, August) by Alice McDermott The author of eight novels, three of which were named Pulitzer Prize finalists, including Charming Billy, which won the

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Time Is Now

      Apr 12, 2023

      Suggested Reading: Write Yourself Out of a Corner: 100 Exercises to Unlock Creativity (Norton, April 2023) by Alice LaPlante The author of the popular The Making of a Story: A Norton Guide to Writing Fiction and Nonfiction (Norton, 2007), Alice LaPla

      2 min read

    • Article

      Upcoming Contests And Submission Windows

      Oct 11, 2023

      INSPIRED to submit your manuscript to a small press? These twelve university presses, nonprofits, and other extraordinary indies have general reading periods or contest deadlines this autumn and winter. Count on these presses to boast enthusiastic st

      5 min read

    • Article

      Ada Limón And The Poetry Of Rebellion

      Apr 7, 2022

      You know what? I’m 45, and I get to write whatever poems I want. The post Ada Limón and the Poetry of Rebellion appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Diaspora Sonnets

      Sep 1, 2022

      The old men drink their spritzers and gossipunder awnings. Red hued and blustery, like two roosters on the side of a road.Skyward they crane their necks and laugh, sometimes they wonder about kings and future kingsand how the muscles peer from their

      2 min read

    • Article

      Submission Calendar

      Feb 16, 2022

      Submission Calendar
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year of Free Contests

      Apr 10, 2024

      WHAT’S better than an opportunity to have your work published by a favorite press, lauded by an author you admire, or honored with a cash prize? How about a chance at these and other prizes at no cost to you? Each year dozens of contests reward write

      8 min read

    • Article

      The New 2022 Nonfiction

      Aug 17, 2022

      The New 2022 Nonfiction
      13 min read

    • Article

      Recommended Flash Fiction from the Editors of 100 Word Story

      May 3, 2018

      As writers and editors of flash fiction, we love stories that are structured around a story’s gaps, the nuanced caesuras of what’s left out. In fact, the promise of a good flash story—a genre usually defined as being less than 1,000 words—is the way

      7 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      for Brenda Shaughnessy The news isn’t good, and neither of us feelslike pretending, though the list of what we hope forgrows longer by the day. More news, goodor otherwise, everything witnessed by the lightof fires, and something we cherished alwaysb

      2 min read

    • Article

      For Further Reading

      Dec 15, 2020

      Here are some moments of clarity that … Are strong but unspoken: From “CHOP SUEY” by IRA SUKRUNGRUANG My mother grabbed my hand and took one step toward the man. In that instant, I saw in her face the same resolve she had when she spanked, the same r

      2 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2020

      She was a security guard and even though her uniform was black I could seeIt was covered in blood, the marble floor was covered in blood, it wasSlowly pooling out from the space where HER HAND used to beOh my god, I said, then I started to say, YOUR

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Flash Fiction Roundtable: Short but Never Small

      May 21, 2018

      Prose poetry and vignettes are driven by imagery and emotion whereas flash fiction has an almost desperate need to tell a story before it’s too late. The post A Flash Fiction Roundtable: Short but Never Small appeared first on The Millions.

      13 min read

    • Article

      Literary MagNet

      Feb 14, 2024

      In the late 1990s, protagonists Taline and Valerie meet in college and become best friends. During the following two decades, they move to different cities, attend graduate school, explore careers, have kids, and fall in and out of love. Their lives

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letter from Lafayette Square

      Dec 7, 2021

      One Sunday in February my mom telephones at eight in the morning to remind me that the bishop of Maryland is coming to Saint James at Lafayette Square, the African American Episcopal church where I was baptized and confirmed. There will be a single s

      15 min read

    • Article

      Fifteen Poets on Revision

      Feb 27, 2018

      After 17 drafts over two weeks, Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art” was completed on November 4, 1975. The poem began as notes, and evolved into a villanelle. She changed the title. She deleted words. She reached for possible rhymes. Brett Candlish Mil

      4 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: November 2020

      Nov 5, 2020

      Stop obsessively refreshing the New York Times's elections page, and check out these new books of poetry by Alice Quinn, Margaret Atwood, Yi Lei, Karina Borowicz, Valzhyna Mort, and Paul Celan. The post Must-Read Poetry: November 2020 appeared first

      6 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Sep 1, 2021

      Two Poems
      2 min read

    • Article

      Sharon Olds, America’s Brave Poet of the Body

      Mar 8, 2017

      Sharon Olds can still remember how furious editors became when she started submitting her poems, 40 years ago. “They came back often with very angry notes,” the 74-year-old poet says, sitting in her small, light-filled apartment overlooking NYU’s cam

      16 min read

    • Article

      Redux: A Poem Is a Suitcase

      Apr 10, 2018

      Redux: A Poem Is a Suitcase
      1 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Loss Detector

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Loss Detector - Meg Pokrass

      The Loss Detector

      A Novella-in-Flash

      by

      Meg Pokrass

      Bamboo Dart Press

      www.bamboodartpress.com

      LOS ANGELES   †   NEW YORK   †   LONDON   †   SYDNEY

      The Loss Detector by Meg Pokrass

      ISBN: 978-1-947240-03-2

      eISBN: 978-1-947240-04-9

      Copyright © 2020 Meg Pokrass. All rights reserved.

      First Printing 2020

      The Big Dipper, originally published in the collection Damn Sure Right (Press 53) and in Fractured Lit

      The Bug Man, originally published in Tin House and in the collection Alligators At Night (Ad Hoc Fiction)

      Perfecto, a version of this story was published in Storysouth as Rollerskating, Barking

      Bamboo Dart Press 001

      For information:

      Bamboo Dart Press

      chapbooks@bamboodartpress.com

      Curated and operated by Dennis Callaci and Mark Givens

      PelekinesisShrimperBamboo Dart Press

      For Sian and Hannah

      We have the wacky mode. Why do we have the wacky mode? To break their hearts. —Donald Barthelme

      Dad’s Ears

      Dad’s ears looked kind. Gentle. Small. He didn’t like them, said they emasculated him. Ma said he was right. He has moon-shaped ears, she said, but please don’t ever repeat this. He can’t laugh about it.

      Nothing about him seemed to work the way it should. With such small ears, how did he hear everything we said in private? When me and Josh whispered about running away, he’d say, a day or two later, How about you kids go study the intelligence of pigeons? Pigeons try to fly, but they really can’t. That’s why you see them squashed in the road.

      I wanted to name myself after a movie star, someone mighty and good, someone everyone liked. I thought about it, then asked Josh. As usual, he was nibbling on a carrot, pretending to be a rabbit.

      "I like Meryl Streep," I said.

      That’s just about right.

      Ma kept saying she was gaining weight. Look at these bingo wings, kids, she’d say.

      She wants to be sexy, Josh said. Maybe she’s tired of being a mother.

      She was

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1