THERESE Julia found it in a pile of old stuff. She didn’t want it, so she said she would give it to Therese. What was she supposed to do with that? Therese said—a beaten up old book with nothing in it but blank paper. Well, you like to do handwriting, Julia said. Therese looked at…
What is the importance of reading and writing in this moment? Those who come from overtly troubled communities and countries have long known that literature holds enormous power: the veracity that can bring about humility, death, growth, and change. As a child walking to school in the tumult of 1940s China, my mother saw men…
1. I know where I came from, born up out of the half shell dog house, roof tin fence rusted right into summer. The bended sag of the wire gate, the warm rustled fur, the worn-down dirt, the dog shit, and all of us, blind pups and children, new in our bodies, snuffling for mothers…
There are moments I smooth the crumpled folds of my life and read them like a map. Travel all roads at once. I meet you again in a small town we reach from opposite directions, a place where no one knows us yet we’re immediately known: two strangers. The map’s creases make as much sense,…
The baby-faced cholo in front of me gently drops a divider bar between what’s his and mine. On my side, a six-outlet surge protector for my computer, and a fireproof glass cup for my Lux Perpetua candle, a votive so powerful it self-destructs. On his, a plastic bottle of store-brand vodka. It’s noon, but somewhere…
In Trinidad, the police have so much power, and they are so young. How to Wear the Uniform The police uniform is a cruel piece of work, the sleeved gray shirt a punishment of thick, rough wool and polyester in the Caribbean heat. Starched to the pliancy of grade-two cardboard, it invites an itchy ring…
For the families of the deceased buried in Jewish Cemeteries desecrated since January of 2017 They came with small rocks and pebbles to place on the holy ground where gravestones had been turned over and desecrated. They came with their relatives’ plot numbers scribbled on scraps of paper. They came with tears in their eyes,…
When Freddy became a robot, a special map appeared in his mind. It alerted him to obstacles and told him the fastest way from here to there. Instead of waiting for the elevator one morning, he flew down the dozen flights of stairs, careful to leap over a big puddle of urine on the landing…
I watch the little weasel rise just partly out of a cleft in earth, its face a periscope at sea, this way and that but not slow as an owl does it, the moon behind him in old children’s books, his giant tufted head turning full circle and rich with pause. Because the weasel isn’t…
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