October 1, 2014
The Peeping Toms
It’s Tuesday night, and Clarice and Miriam are already in bed, lying side by side on their backs, books held aloft in their right hands. Most nights, they are exhausted […]
July 1, 2014
Forty Days in the Desert
It’s raining sand. Fine, warm, flaxen sand. It drifts down like powdered sugar and dusts the trees and lawn furniture. No breeze distracts this sand from its sharp incline, straight […]
July 1, 2014
Mezzo
Though it had been four years since she’d seen him, (since she’d been passed over), and they were predicting more snow for Boston, it was the right year to have […]
July 1, 2014
Knock, Knock
She’s decided—even though he’s married, even though there’s Nathan, even though the artists pillory the unfaithful despite their own eyes patrolling the Retreat’s cafeteria like guards hoping to catch someone, […]
July 1, 2014
Kingdom
I was waiting for the barber to finish up with Lorenzo so he could get to me and I could get back to the store, when the police pulled up. […]
July 1, 2014
Moon, Moon, My Honey
My husband was in charge of the Nightly Improbable Joke, broadcast punctually every evening at 10:05 p.m., the world’s appetite for improbability peaking, he calculated, just before bedtime. One night […]
April 1, 2014
Three Sisters
Mari liked the word they had for her. El halcón. The hawk was looking for movement, not, like the vulture, for the stillness that cannot be faked. Mari—who really was […]
April 1, 2014
An Ottoman’s Arabesque
But how shall we define the Infinite? — Rumi His eyes were frequently inflamed and he feared going blind. Most of the time he wore blue glasses. The papers often […]
April 1, 2014
River
A little cool, you think, then the iron-scent takes you in, you leave your feet and let it—early summer chill easing its ripple across your chest as if this water […]
April 1, 2014
The Reason for All My Sounds
That summer we watched Carolina and Richie fall in love, I found myself, more than once, nostalgic for those early days of a relationship, when everything, everything, appears perfect. “Do […]
April 1, 2014
Beauty in the Age of Chaos and Savagery
Denny Birdwell was thirty-nine years old and retired from the National Football League for almost four years when he was arrested in the produce section of Whole Foods Market in […]
April 1, 2014
Night Swim
We’ve barely made it up the mountain, and Father’s litany already begins: the snow, the slippery road, our Yugo’s balding tires. Snow in April, passes through my mind; just like […]