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In my spare time I write.
I have many stories and some longer works. Here are some stories which have recently appeared in magazines and podcasts.
To find out more about my writing or my current novel in progress, contact mia@creativeprocess.info .
“Let’s make love. It’s not safe to kiss.”
I can’t believe you are saying this now. I didn’t even know you thought of me that way or at all…
Yes
by Mia Funk
When people ask me something, I’ve a principle: always say yes. Makes things easier and much more fun. I used to say no. Back then I was a pain-in-the-ass, my own family said so. Took years to realize all anyone wants to hear is yes.
Do you think I’m a good lover?
Yes.
Do you like being with me?
Yes…
“Yes” is a short story from a Novel in Progress
Everything
by Mia Funk
We’re all seated in the school gymnasium screaming for some reason. The teacher says this is called the Theatre of the Oppressed, and that’s why we are yelling and learning how to assert ourselves. We are stamping in place, and the guy next to me gets down on all fours and has to pretend to be my dog, while I pretend to walk him. Which is fun, I’ve never had a dog before…
Waiting for Dark
by Mia Funk
She had long legs for a Japanese, at least for what I imagined Japanese women were like, and that’s why it took longer to dispose of her. I always thought of them as shy and submissive, short and malnourished, like the kids in my barrio. He told me she’d been a dancer. He talked a lot, more than I expected of a Japanese. Of course he could have been lying, they do that. Try to get you on their side, so you’ll understand and maybe feel sorry for them because they’re afraid you’ll rat them out…
Watch VIDEO
In My Dreams
by Mia Funk
In my dreams we are moving through corridors and taking each other by the hand and there is music playing in other rooms, but we barely hear it for the pulse of blood that leads us to leave our lives behind. All the children and the mothers and disappointed lovers who are waiting for us in other rooms with all their obligations and timetables and needs and certainties and clockwork lives…
The End of Summer
by Mia Funk
LISTEN to it on next season of the 52 Men podcast
He was my first boyfriend. I’d met him before I knew just how bad people can be...
Man Ray’s Lips
by Mia Funk
I should have loved you when I had a chance. When the time was right and, as they say, all the ducks were lined up, and it would have all been so easy. That small window, open just a crack, but with a crowbar and this thing growing in me–was it even then love?–I could have got down there and pried it open…
Waiting for Dark
She had long legs for a Japanese, at least for what I imagined Japanese women were like, and that’s why it took longer to dispose of her. I always thought of them as shy and submissive, short and malnourished, like the kids in my barrio. He told me she’d been a dancer. He talked a lot, more than I expected of a Japanese. Of course he could have been lying, they do that. Try to get you on their side, so you’ll understand and maybe feel sorry for them because they’re afraid you’ll rat them out…
Watch VIDEO
Beauty & Cunning
by Mia Funk
The fire is what changed me forever and gave me, what you might call for lack of a better word, my beauty. I’d never thought of myself as beautiful––it’s strange when you read about yourself, the way other people see you, making all these judgments though you’ve never met. I still feel like they’re talking about another person…
Love, For a Limited Time Only
by Mia Funk
The first time I saw her she was in a window. Under her left breast was taped a cardboard sign: Love, For a Limited Time Only. That’s what caught my eye, the sign, not her breasts, though those were nice too. I stared at the sign a moment, reading it over like a poem to reveal its secret meaning. Her hands so still, I thought she was a mannequin. Took me a moment to see that she was breathing.
The Kiss
by Mia Funk
“Let’s make love. It’s not safe to kiss.”
I can’t believe you are saying this now. I didn’t even know you thought of me that way or at all.
It is dark, and we are breaking curfew. I have a scarf under my eyes because I lost my mask in the street when kids who’d come in from the banlieue surrounded me and tried to steal my food. We have found a quiet place in the corridor to make love. Found, as though you needed to look far to find silence. There is no one in the streets. Paris is a desert in the middle of winter.
I didn’t know you had thought of me, but I had thought of you often. Yes. Imagined a kiss…
Displaced Persons
by Mia Funk
Her grandfather would never go back there. He distrusted the place. ‘The people smile all the time,’ he used to say, as though that were a bad thing. ‘How can you trust anyone who smiles constantly.’ And the girl thought at the time that he could just as easily be talking about America. ‘Yes, but here they smile all the time and they don’t really mean it. They’re smiling at you, but it’s for a reason. Like they’re insane or they’re high on Prozac or they want to cheat you out of your life savings…
What price for the green space?
by Mia Funk
Our whole city is grey. For some reason when they were planning it they forgot to put in parks. I think they thought they’d plant a tree or two when they had time and then they forgot, and the whole city became overpopulated with people and cars and subways and pollution and by the time they remembered there was no space for a tree or even a pathetic patch of grass…
What are your thoughts?
by Mia Funk
THE SHRIVELLED GROWTH is now nine weeks old, measuring over an inch from ear to ear. Too late to get rid of it, Dr. Moore says. Either I could wait a little longer and then cut it’s head off or––
“It’s got a head?”
“It is a head.”
Fast Fashion
by Mia Funk
Jerome had found his favorite jacket in the weekly specials rails at RW312, the only place in the city where you could dress yourself from head to toe for £20 and still have change left over. No one knew what RW312 stood for, but their clothes made you look smart, at least for a day or two. His friend Nigel said it sounded military... ‘Stands for that chemical shit they spray on it so that it never wrinkles.’ …
It’s a Luxury to Cry
by Mia Funk
She used to paint faces that stared out at you, but collectors found them too confrontational. When she turned away from this her subjects did too, to look away, searching for something. And collectors liked these paintings better. They didn’t know what the figures were looking for––that’s what they liked about them…