In a backwards accident, Men cutting the old furnace Out to make room for oil Find the wedding band that Slipped, in February Nineteen twenty-four, Down the heat vent and melted To a coal. It was the coldest Month of the year my mother Was born, and The Captain Sat quiet while his wife, Her…
I admit it: I’ve written some introductions. Except for not being able to worm out of it with Best American Short Stories 1987, though, I’ve confined my remarks to books of photography. You know: The photographs are right there, easily viewed as fast as your fingertips can turn a page, so I’ve tended to write…
They grew up playing hockey on Everett Pond, long after supper, after homework and Bonanza or Laugh-In or My Three Sons, after they said good night and went to their rooms yawning as if headed to sleep. The grown-ups pretended not to know about the rendezvous at the rink, but some of the fathers had,…
The weird thing about the place was the speed of light— eight, nine miles an hour, tops. Isweartagod! It was beautiful, though, the way it felt slowing over you like a balmy breeze—light slow enough to catch in a, in a cup, light you could smear on a slice of bread like jam, light you…
Your husband’s laugh, a glass of grenadine. You greet the guests, steer coats onto your arms. Ice rattles the kitchen: he’s mixing drinks. You stand where you can keep an eye on him. One measured glance at me, your face a smooth storm, and I know whatever I’d say—vague murmurings in one…
June 1973 Early on the morning of Alice’s wedding, when I was nine, I woke to hear the front door slamming into the quiet, and I got out of my bed and went to the window. Standing on tiptoes, feet bare against floor planks chilled by the air conditioner, the breeze running up my…
Myth has it that Ann Beattie published her first short story in The New Yorker when she was twenty-five years old,signed a first-read contract with them, and thereafter made five to seven annual appearances in the venerable magazine — with stories she would write in one sitting, in one afternoon. As myths go, this one…
for Hermann Michaeli On the day the balls disappeared, men playing soccer suddenly looked like crazy people chasing invisible rabbits through the short grass. Men playing baseball became more clearly what they’d always been: bored teenagers waiting around for something to happen. Spectators, at home and in the stands, believed they were being jerked around…
for my sister Madeline Then you’ve forgotten how we couldn’t wait for the bulldozers to raze that house on Ridge Road. At the fresh edge they’d butted into the woods, the machines sat stalled for days, reluctant to finish up the job. The goldfish pond had already dried down to its beer cans when our…
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