The team of dermatologists stand at the end of her bed, peering at her ravaged skin with benign expressions on their faces. They are leaning forward at an alarming angle. Maybe their shoes are filled with lead, Louise thinks. They are grounded and seem to move in unison. She definitely can’t see them flying anywhere.…
In the lobby, after the show, “Dad,” you said, and touched his shoulder. That was all I heard, or needed to. I sat here once, your fingers said. I saw the world you showed me. The view was what it was— a bay, a bridge, a vacation or two. Perhaps a parade or a just-reached…
It was exciting to be in Spain and traveling with Ava. In truth, it was exciting to be anywhere with Ava. We walked arm and arm, wandered into charming cafes, and took in all the main sights. We were at that stage in a relationship where it was new enough to be filled with wonder…
She picks a conch shell out of the pile in the terra cotta pot. Thousands of miles from its home and still the shell spills sand from its center. She wants to crawl in, cup a beach in her hands. Listen to the prose of the ocean— Tell me about your emptiness. Tell me about…
1 My daddy worked as a shipping manager, packing train cars with odd-sized boxes of furniture. He filled every speck of space, arranging the cartons like shapes in a puzzle cube. Daddy could stuff a pregnant cat into a shoe box if need be and bury her neatly in the ground, lined up with the…
I masturbated mindlessly to the violence on the screen. It was a report of some tragic bombings somewhere far away from here. My wife was depressed upstairs while I pumped to the reporter’s emotionless voice reporting factual deaths, in a factual reality. My wife hadn’t fucked me since she went on the tablets the doctors…
I – Scratch & Whip Your father taught you how to overcome boredom by taking you to the racetrack. On those long Sunday afternoons you and your younger brother yelled at each other in the backseat of your father’s brown Hyundai. The car parked in the shadiest spot on the lot with the windows cracked…
You can probably picture the little nowhere town of Westfield, New Hampshire, with its trailer parks, abandoned factories and half-empty apartment buildings, thrown down like a doormat in a valley just northeast of the White Mountains. When I got to town, pear-shaped Jenny with the criss-cross eyes, Westfield was cold, hushed and January empty, and…
Lapping slowly up the shore The city rises like the tide Higher and rolling back again Until I am waist deep in it High tide at the eye line There is a distinct murk to it An urge to keep the eyes firm shut Swimming blindly through crosswalks It is an indecisive grey The surface…
A virgin, I carry an empty: an accumulation of space. A sign around my neck: the core of my body is an untouched baby’s crib. I incubate something else, a sputtering leak drips: rainwater hitting the roof of my mouth. A kerosene pool swells, overflowing the crib. When I hold my breath, I hear it…
