Fiction

Tak-Nam

My family had moved to Hong Kong because Tak-nam, my older brother, was very sick. He had bad heart and lung problems, and we thought that Hong Kong, with its warm climate and ocean air, would help him. We lived in a cottage on top of a small hill overlooking a bay. The water was…

Historical Necessity

Her journal was stolen. More correctly, her car was stolen and the journal was in the trunk in a tote bag. It happened three weeks ago, the day after she made the long drive from Portsmouth to Pennsylvania to spend Thanksgiving with her mother. She had just broken off a lingering love affair by changing…

To Lubomierz

His father had died at Auschwitz in July of 1969, quite probably the only Jew to have done so in twenty-four years and unquestionably the only one who'd been flown from there from what seemed like halfway round the world to begin his trip to dust in the quiet earth of Mosstown. Not to mention…

The Darkness of Love

the darkness of love, in whose sweating memory all error is forced. – Amiri Baraka   DAY 1 When Handle woke at ten in the morning, he got up and walked to the far window. Hungover, he half expected the sound of traffic or the fading drone of an airliner as he lifted the window….

A Letter from the Sahara

trans. Italian Ruth Feldman After an hour spent in the desert, I try to set down in writing everything that I have learned. When walking in the desert you have to keep your gaze on the ground all the time so as to study the position of each step; under your eyes you always have…

Fire Ants

She had kept the bottle stuck down inside a basket of clothes that needed ironing, and throughout the course of the day whenever she had a chance to walk through the back room where the basket was kept, she would stop for the odd sip or two. By the middle of the afternoon, she had…

Lord of Autumn

Gordon He pressed the side of his face to the pillow and waited for the sound of birds. The room was black, the window open; when a breeze came the curtains billowed out against a lighter sky. He heard the clock. He heard the dry sound of Helen breathing; there was a sigh and a…

Tall Woman Love

Beal comes in the night. "Auntie!" he says softly with his lips against the glass. The door is latched. Just a thin latch, not meant to keep out something big. Beal taps the glass with his knuckles. "Auntie! It's me!" Among the hairs of a young boy's beard, pimple scars have been carved, concave as…

Unity

Gropius and I came to America in 1937 from England. We had been in London on a Leave of Absence permit from the German government and it was by no means certain that we would be allowed to return to claim our belongings, which were at the time in Berlin in care of my sister….