“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. . . . . .
Read More
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, . . .
Read More
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 . . .
Read More
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 . . .
Read More
(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 . . .
Read More
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 . . .
Read More
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 . . .
Read More
My brother, Victor, said that Mr. B was the only interesting teacher at our school, and that I might finally learn a thing or two. Because this brother never said anything more urgent to me than Get out of my room, I saw in his comments something akin to the hot and . . .
Read More
Photo: Lee B. Ewing Professor and psychoanalyst Dori Laub, creator of the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, has drawn upon his own experiences in interviewing Holocaust survivors to construct a model for the interactive work of the interviewer. According to Laub, the interviewer in this delicate and unique situation must act . . .
Read More
I had to take off, because I did not trust myself not to change my mind. I was fat and out of shape. Even at the best of times I had never been one for running, because I considered it an undignifying exercise. But this was not the time for preserving dignity. . . .
Read More