Featured – Page 32 – swamp pink

Reasons to Live

I went to Bratislava because I was tired of being owned by other people, of being violated by them. There was the man on a Thai island, who’d waited until the porchlight switched off outside my bungalow before stepping out of the shadows. There was the boy who’d helped himself to my body when we...

Personal Protection Equipment

Look elsewhere—eye contact creates an agenda Click the Manage Participants tab for public health Touch only your surfaces If you feel others, it can become severe Close contact with the virtual is waiting Unlike an in-person event, make it kinky risk everything, control nothing Masks are ill-advised in the chat box Undetectable exposure is all...

From the Neighborhood

The next-door dog is barking in early evening. What is this gesture? I hide behind the bins I’m putting out. I wish to stay in it. Not wanting to leave this floating scene, the day is young, airy, light, the moon has mounted for hours. And you, you have been sick a while. The ceiling...

Something I Heard

Today I’m not going to get dressed— not even a bathrobe or a towel. Put it out of your mind and let’s continue. There’s no difference between a vegetative state and a state of unrealized content. Between you and me I’m radically happy. I haven’t suffered as much as others and I’m relatively well read—...

Only Daughter

Mother, I woke with two arils ———in my palm and when I swallowed, I thought this time I would be ready ———to unlearn hunger, to spit sweetness into your gaping mouth. I’m tired ———of being the animal of your flesh, the only doorway ———you’ll ever walk through—on one side, you dreamt of having a boy,...

hands on dirt with small plant

No More Kissing Talk

Later, Mrs. Zardari can’t help but think that she shouldn’t have given the bus driver a cough drop in the first place. She had fished it carefully out of her purse, without opening the purse all the way, for fear that something would drop out, and held the drop in her left hand, between her...

foggy mountaintops and forest

Mercy

Cori had not lived with a roommate in several years and approached the situation with trepidation. She had not been told with whom she would board. This was intentional, she suspected, not merely clerical truancy. The organization liked to have the upper hand. Most organizations do, but this one was famous for its rigid worship...

Vanishing Act

The year I turn eighteen, my father manifests his own brand of magic. My mother, sister, and I all crowd around the kitchen table while my father sits at the head, grinning slyly. He begins the show by laying a pen in front of us and we watch as the writing utensil vanishes, getting paler...

On Discerning An Impossible Object

The first friend I ever made at school was a boy named Gordon. He wore jeans and flannels, and his cheeks were round and always red. We got along well, and one day I suggested that we hang out after school some time. He agreed and said that he liked that idea, adding that if...

Aleph with All, All with Aleph

December 3, 2020

And when the storm subsides, the catchbasin coos; the sky exhales; the dead rosebush withers; the bright kingfisher paces in the sand. And all night, the lemon tree remembers sun. And the bathhouse cradles the salt spring, casts its bodies in white steam. And the earth opens for the spade. And the moon jar sings...

The Super's Wife

December 3, 2020

A few days after the new year, my husband Mark tells me he’s worried about Harry. Mark has described Harry as fiftyish, judging by the worry grooves in his forehead and the gray growing on the sides of his long wavy hair. He’s the only one—out of three-hundred apartments—who has never once voiced a complaint....

The Prince

December 3, 2020

When Frank gets to work he’s told to run the vacuum. Everything in the Prince is carpeted—the foyer, the mailroom, the downstairs lobby, all the hallways on all fifteen floors. The management company replaces the carpet every now and then, but never changes the color from what it is now: chimney-smoke gray. The short-term boarders...