Let’s say the world comes to you from outside. Why not? What are you but malleable organic bodies, nothingness within variegated layers of hard and soft tissue pumped with H2O, birthed into the torment of the world? Your orifices—eyes, ears, nose, mouth, anus, genitals, skin—flutter open, and you are ready for business. Me, Kitty, too….
Just past midnight, when it looked like things might get out of hand, Greer brought out the baseball bat he kept under the bar and, holding it cocked, edged toward the tall red-haired punk with the bad mouth, and his two jerk friends. “Time to go home, boys,” he said. “You better think, man,” the…
The woman having a miscarriage bumps into the woman getting an abortion. It is New Year’s Eve. They are both in line at the pharmacy, buying ibuprofen. One carries a basket holding a bottle of wine, the other four candy bars. There are many people ahead of them. “Those look good,” says the first, glancing…
The Sahara it is not. At night, the little tourist caravan arrives at a wave of dunes cresting beneath the starry sky. But during the day, they carry on through splotches of the unvaried scrub that is Rajasthan’s Thar. Trees are occasional, of a variety that gives the camels gas and causes them to slobber…
She doesn’t know which aspect of the piece makes her want to become part of the space of the room—the midnight safety of the gathered sheet, pulled up at one corner to protect, to comfort, to block the light so white, to be sucked on around saliva-wet fingers, to hide; or the white light of…
Colette published this exploration of jealousy around the time she separated from her lover Missy, the Marquise de Belbeuf (1862-1945). It was first printed February 22, 1912, in Le Matin, a newspaper edited by her soon-to-be second husband, Henri de Jouvenel (1876-1935). I’m chewing on a sprig of bitter herb that makes my saliva…
Her family moved to town from Omaha on Christmas Eve. Her father and mother are the new managers of the Sherman Ice Arena, which, thanks to the coal-baron millionaire who owns it, is open all year. It is mid-January now, skating season. Half the town goes to the public skate on Saturday afternoon, the experience…
Rusty Bickers went walking through the fields at dusk, Rusty Bickers with a sadness and nobility that only Joseph could see. Joseph dreamed of Rusty Bickers at the kitchen table, eating Captain Crunch cereal before bedtime, his head low, lost in thought; Rusty Bickers, silent but awake beneath the blankets on his cot, his hands…
I’m driving my aunt Sarah’s Lexus, taking us to the meat place. We pass farms with pastures full of Holsteins and green trees. Weeds fill the ditches. Beyond, in the woods, are deer, raccoons, and skunks. Sometimes, driving on the road, I see them try to cross. Sometimes I see a carcass. I used to…
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