I love my nonno very much. That’s Italian for “grandpa.” I love Italian too. One of my two languages that, for reasons beyond my control, is my only language: the one, the survivor. Anyway, I love Italian. And I’m getting to know it, and to know it I write it: I carefully . . .
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Natasha — my name, which is not from my only language, the one, the survivor, is also not from the other, the aborted, the rejected— becomes N-A-T-A-S-H-A. Hell to write, especially because of that “SH” that to me sounds like it should be “SCI.” But I’ve accepted things as they are: for . . .
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Would you like a cigarette? I’d prefer Talking Mule, 1979 Burgundy. Texture and hie of Bethlehem rust. Notes of must, slate, and pre-coital rouge when tongued to the roof of the mouth. Bold finish, lingering up to seventeen seconds, diminishing to uvular frog. 3.5 stars.— from “Police Interrogation of Food Critic B.W. . . .
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“Once upon a time,” we say—a custom every self-respecting storyteller must follow as a way of opening a window onto another world, elsewhere in time, space, and dimension. . . . So, once upon a time. . . but this time, it was the very beginnning, the very first time. . . . . .
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My dad, who liked confusing little kids, used to sing: “Of all the creatures who have wings, I prefer the flying pig.” At first, I was suspicious of the song, and later on it annoyed me. When I was about six, he would take me for walks around the outskirts of Moreno, . . .
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While the storm dances outside, rats huddle in the shadows at the far end of the attic. Julie can barely make them out from where she sits, an old wooden-handled axe and a battery-operated lantern by her side, the gable window rattling in its frame above. Other shadows shuffle about down close . . .
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What do we remember?I read about a woman who could recallthe womb, who described it as a shiny, mirroredsubstance, slick, the purplish hue of an eggplant.Another suspended in anti-gravity, shuffledalong in a premature moonwalk.—from “Birth,” Volume 61, Issue 1 (Spring 2020) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.My very . . .
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(Author Photo by Simon Sahner) Around the courthouse they’ve built orange and white barricades,directed traffic to side streets to reduce heads craning from car windows,and as I walk the dog this morning with Kate, she turns and asks, What do you think? and I say, Must be a protest. When my dad gavethe eulogy at my . . .
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The dress bound my bodylike a bandage staunching a wound.Lace choked my throat.My arms were cinched in tourniquets of tuelle. I was a hand grenade of a girlvacuum packed into a costume,my fingers poised in the fuselage of my lap.I’d chopped my hair short.—from “My First Grade Picture,” Volume 61, Issue 1 . . .
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There must have been a worldbefore the slender architecturein the palm flexed the pistonsin the wrist and the chiselshaped the hips of this;there must have been a single treeplucked and carved hollowwhich drew from some of usa wilderness; […]—from “Guitar,” Volume 61 Issue 1 (Spring 2020) Tell us about one of the . . .
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