Fiction

". . . moths hear sounds through their wings." "Moths require only three things to survive and breed: food, shade, and privacy." "Moths don’t eat wool . . . Only the larval form of the moths are wool eaters." There are over ten thousand five hundred identified species of moths in North America alone. When…

  First, her name was Jane, and if that wasn’t bad enough, one day, while she was sitting in the dining hall and drawing her trademark Jews—tiny cartoon men with beards and wisdom who decorated the edge of all her notebooks—the men got up off the page, shimmied down a table leg, and bused her…

When she left in the mornings, her husband and baby were still asleep. It was four o’clock, black and silent, a time when it felt illegal to be awake. She laid her clothes out the night before so she could dress in the dark, just jeans and a sweatshirt, sneakers and socks. And earrings—though no…

Call number: 305.235 G127t It is evening, crack Internet researcher, and you have fortified yourself. At the bodega. Your form is top, your liver is poisoned, you have steadied your frail nerves with the requisite malt liquor product. Ambrosia of the Gods! Sixty-four ounces of the fruit of the plains, the hop, and you are…

  The taxi pulled to a stop in front of a brownstone whose wrought-iron gate looked oddly familiar. It was a rainy Sunday evening. The last traces of light hung morosely in the sky, illuminating rows of brownstones whose façades were uniformly lifeless, as though everyone inside were hiding, or away. Jason fumbled with his…

  Louis liked the paddle more than the man who swung it. He respected the instruction, the ritual, the organization of his thoughts when the paddle struck its target. He enjoyed the stinging clarity, the expedient way the paddle transmitted its message. "You’re a bad boy, aren’t you? You’re Daddy’s little pig," the man with…

I think the last time I saw you may have been that time near the church. I still like that church despite this, though the church is also other things to me. In fact, more and more I wish I remembered those other things that are called permanent, inviolable, impregnable to assault or trespass, secure…

As the lights go up, a man standing on a small platform facing stage right (an imaginary audience there) waves one more time at those people and turns and steps down toward us. He is dressed in an impeccably casual way: slacks and a sport coat, tie optional. Around his neck on a ribbon is…