Jewish American fiction, only a small presence in the American literary landscape before World War II, quickly became a colossus in the decades after. Besides the prize-winning big three of Bellow, Malamud, and Roth, talents as diverse as Cynthia Ozick, Leonard Michaels, and Gerald Shapiro contributed to a collective body of work that managed to…
The last of a late night’s argument, the dreadful unsnarling of intent— our what you said and what I meant, and neither of us penitent. After the hours and anger spent, what I continue to resent there in the bed, the dark apartment taking its turn as the respondent— babbling pipes, sighing vent— is how,…
A man with CRCK on his snapback. A man in a BLDBTH hoodie[what happened to the affable vowels?]. I stay shy of the men on the busbecause we know who we are. We are propelled by kimchi and colognethat smells of diesel fuel and demon. Five hours of trance and hardconsonants. I find a seat…
On the plastic monthly calendar stuck to the refrigerator, Michelle hadn’t bothered to write the dates in the little boxes. Monday was Monday, Tuesday was Tuesday. The dates didn’t matter. Desmond’s routine filled the days: school=red dots, occupational therapy=orange dots, water therapy=green dots, speech therapy=yellow and brown checked dots. The stickers formed a lively zigzag…
Make a drawing of it, I was told My world of simple sun, bare land She was raised in that kennel on the hill An old trailer, I draw it vertical, tipped up on its rear end There’s plenty light but little shade I add some frenchified shadow around the trailer A loud squeak, ka-pow!…
Like black birds pushing against glass, I didn’t hold myself back. I gave in completely and went all the way to the vague influence of the distant stars. I saw something like an angel spread across the horizon like some dreadful prophecy refusing to be contained, to accept limits. She said, “Are you sure you…
Breezing easily between exotic Chinoiserie and hometown hoedown, whisking lightly between woodwind delicacy and jazzy trombone, he must have the widest and oddest repertoire of gestures, which allows him a stylistic and dynamic range unusual even among today’s most highly regarded conductors. The way he slipped from the grandiose opening Adagio maestoso to the suddenly…
We were driving back from a weekend away at a friend’s house in Normandy when I thought I saw my father—his pebbly gray ashes indisputably scattered and sunk in the icy Atlantic ten long winters before—now alive and well, a passenger in a neighboring coupe. “Dad,” I whispered in astonishment, like a little extra exhalation…
My armpits smell like Campbell’s soup and my hair feels like the welcome mat beneath the sign to wipe your feet between the showroom and the shop. Who’s the new guy sweeping up? Six bucks an hour, off the books. Outside the showroom and the shop, he sleeps in cabs of junkyard trucks, eats at…
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