After I persuademy students there isa name for everything, for days I mull on whatto call the kind of kinddissembling I’ve done.—from “Dustsceawung,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Once I read an interview where Shane McCrae talked about reading some of his . . .
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Right when the dissector picks up the eye, I notice the sunhas already found a place to bruise with light. With slight pressure, she shifts the pink flesh and muscle.That eye can’t see to ask its paths. Or fact its ransom.—from “Blind Spot,” Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023) Tell us about . . .
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In the same spot where Father died, the dead body of a deer lay prostrate in the rain. Raindrops collected on the ground, flowing like a river. Invisible to the naked eye, electricity trickled into the moist soil as if through the veins of leaves, electrons packed closely together. Micro-organisms gnawed away . . .
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For every year you aren’t a tongue away: America clogs. I ice the WhiteZin, choose a filter, call this mood. Not to say I’m a hunterbut I refuse to see the syllableswhich luck your name—from “A Toast to the Narcissist’s Exit,” Volume 64, Issue 2 (Spring 2023) Tell us about one of . . .
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Maria slinked in corners and stood next to objects that did not move, pretending that she was an object. She held on to her growing belly. It wouldn’t stop moving, wriggling like a worm exposed to the sun. She tried to wear bigger clothes, pretending that nothing was happening in the area . . .
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The nanny Fidelia Córdoba kept her rhythm in her tetas. She’d been born on the banks of the River Sipí and she had bulging tetas, small and round like a pair of corozos, with retractile nipples that also had a sense of direction. They were all at once compass-sextant-weather-vane-plumb-line-quadrant-astrolabe-point-you-left-point-you-right, or wherever you . . .
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Whenever my mom and dad were at the dinner table (the place of memorial and celebration, the place of conversation), I’d ask them about their days. I wanted to imagine their lives without me, their movements and rhythms when I was not there. What I was getting at, though I didn’t know . . .
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I’m so in love with you all of a sudden, you machine angel. Angel machine. Because I am still learning your new smells. Plastic, salt, animal, finally and still thinking plastic, salt, animal, finally. Because you are letting me stand you up in the shower and wash your hair like you are . . .
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Hannah doesn’t get on-campus housing for the summer, but she doesn’t want to go back to Missouri, back to her old life, back in time. The summer before, her first summer after starting college, she sat in basements sipping Budweiser as her formerly bookish friends swapped stories about frat parties. She sat . . .
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Maybe it was a reaction to old age; it could be thathe resented retired life. But the ex-neurologist,amateur collector of oriental coins, had recently taken to scolding his poor wife for all that prayingunder her breath, Mashallah-this and Inshallah-that.—from “Mr.Kemal Questions God,” Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023) Tell us about one . . .
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