The sky was low. His head was a vase of sorrows he wanted to fill with blossoms. He stepped into the House of Wigs. The saleslady said, “Try this one on. It’s called the Mind of Fire. It turns ashes into flame. Prometheus was wearing it, they say, when he was punished by the Gods…
The first time Merel and Fen spoke to their yuppie neighbors, the Yuppie Husband pointed at the Yuppie Wife and said, “This is Christy Parker. If you happen to mention her to anyone around town, make sure to use both her first and last names, cool? She’s the top realtor in the state and her…
And shall we describe the beautiful bike? It was a beautiful color the beautiful bike. What ever happened to the beautiful bike? The beautiful bike rode off into the beautiful sunset. Not by itself, surely. Who was pedaling the beautiful bike? You, you were the one pedaling the beautiful bike last seen disappearing into the…
She steps up and out and stands in her yard. Ice crackling the mud and hoarfrost burning off the tall grass left unscythed beneath the trees. She bends and puts a finger to the ice, bends farther over and sniffs at it. Now here come the crows. Cawing and settling on the ridge line of…
As a child—“I mean really little,” Jean Thompson says, “teething and waking up at night crying”—her sleep-deprived parents put a stack of graham crackers in one corner of her crib and a stack of Little Golden Books in the other. “Whenever I woke up with sore gums, instead of screaming, I’d find my books and…
The beach house in Bodega Bay was supposed to be our escape, but it was just another place for us to be uncomfortable together. Every summer, we used to spend a couple weeks there. My father drove us in his coral car, a BMW sedan so glossy it was almost as if it wasn’t there;…
In the Plan B essay series, writers discuss their contingency plans, extraliterary passions, and the roads not traveled. The way my husband tells the story, I slipped on the ice, got a concussion, and when I woke up, said, “I want to learn to play the accordion.” It is true that, after a concussion,…
According to my diary, it was on May 29, 1998, that I received an invitation to the Séance Book Club. The letter from a Mrs. Lisette Visser read in part, “We would appreciate your being with us on eight consecutive evenings, during which we will summon the characters from your novel, The Museum Guard, and…
As you head south and east, with your back to the sea, the city of Alvito draws you uphill along ever-smaller roads, tightening spirals and switchbacks that soon have you confused over what’s the approach and what the close-clustered town itself. Around just which curb-hugging rise and turn did you finally arrive? Nothing so defines…
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