Fiction |
“The Three Trials of Silent Lady“
“You could catch a ton of codfish within sight of Cape Cod in the early Eighties — which was why my shipmate Chris and I stepped aboard the fifty-foot school-bus-yellow gillnetter Silent Lady late one winter afternoon …”
Fiction |
“Poifect”
“Martin’s wife crawls onto the lap of the politician. Martin’s wife feels that she and Martin must become more civic-minded. They are local business owners, after all. And all politics is local.”
Fiction |
“Virus Child” and “Open Letter to My Grifter”
“I don’t remember my past bodies, or how I was swindled into ending up in this one. How I owe you essential parts of this one; how I’ll pay for this one.”
Fiction |
“Sebastian”
“When his mother tucked him into bed those nights, she said, Be sure not to get sand in your sheets, did you wash it from your fingernails and hair? to which Sebi would reply, Mama, I stayed on the tram today, and she would kiss his cheek.”
Fiction |
“The Queen of Language”
“Valentina wears the standard issue orange jumpsuit with “Probation” across the back, and when she sees me enter, she waves and smiles as though we’d run into one another at a coffee shop. She has run away, been re-arrested, and bounced from the streets to the Halls many times.”
Fiction |
from Days
“… all the ways in which nature is animal, nature is human, and then swallows the human, absorbs it like its own blood, poor or rich, all of us roaming in our clothes like divots, like bumps with mirrors coming out of them …”
Fiction |
“Running Free”
“Then I felt that distinct dampness in my underwear and wiped scarlet. On my way home, through tears, I saw Open blink at the pet store.”
Fiction |
“The End of the Line”
“I claimed the first empty seat I found, happy to leave our conversation on the platform, but when he wedged next to me, it seemed certain to continue.”
Fiction |
from No. 54
“I call up Madame D. I’ve had another offer, I say. How much? she asks. Twelve and a half thousand a month, I reply. Then you’ll get the same from us, she says, and whispers, Now I own you.”
Fiction |
“The Unnaming” and “War Story”
“A vortex of air had trapped the bird within the flag — the same flag our mother received after our father died in that faraway country.”
Essay |
“July, August” and “Maybe Tomorrow or the Day After”
“I’ve found many good books. A book on how to garden, circa 1970. A book on country drives to take and why you might. A book of the history of a little town nearby, the one with so many stone walls.”
Fiction |
“Response”
“I’d come up with a title for the Beckett essay, which is odd because I hadn’t written a word and I usually don’t title things until after I’ve completed them. ‘Nearer My Molloy Than Thee.’ I worried about the reception of that title.”
Fiction |
“Kill Price,” “Lemons” and “Baby Cuz”
“He asks for lemons by saying lemons but his wife says can we have some lemons please. He ignores this, at her trying to tell him what to say in English or how to say it as if he didn’t know how to ask for what he wanted.”
Fiction |
“Snug Harbor,” “They roam the bay unloved,” and “A comet blazed across the sky”
“… and when I turn the map over I see that it tells you nothing about coming ashore, and everything about where to drown.”
Fiction |
“Collaboration Incidents” and “Liz Phair, unexiled”
“Once, Beatriz had loved. Now she was transcended by the Paradise she privileged into an action that humans could not name. It made her whitehot, and everybody saw it.”