Wagner Castings Co., 1994 It was all golden air and sepia pavement, gray smoke blooming from industrial stems. Fly ash flecked parking lot air, drifting black snow. Smell of melting rubber and brushfires. I thought the world would always be that way: low rumbling machinery, conveyer belts spun thin, cracks spreading like thickening veins, distant […]
The year was 1993 and I was eight months pregnant and trapped in an elevator with an unstable guy who was rumored to have murdered his wife. I wanted to get out, but thought it would be rude, since I’d already told him I was going to the top floor for something to eat. Mr. […]
Folklore is Not the Original Music [The light must be turned on to see the day. The wind will carry away the body’s shell. And all will continue on its course.] You once wished for a god to come to your gathering. But you are a common man, a son of the earth. A black […]
Matthew Zapruder (born 1967 in Washington, D.C.) is an American poet, editor, translator, and professor. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Sun Bear (2014), Come On All You Ghosts (2010), The Pajamaist (2006), and American Linden (2002). His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harvard Review, The Believer, and […]
See this Lithuanian woman. She has been feeding my father dinners of mashed turkey and broccoli, potato pancakes, washing his clothes, bathing him, offering him the choice between Wolf Blitzer and Vanna White for years. Observe her hands as they gently push his body to the side of the hospital bed. They are covered with […]
Since sophomore year, the crew walks three blocks to the bakery with the bitchy lady at the counter. Sometimes we get the cheese-filled dough beuregs, but sometimes we get the ground-beef flatbreads for only two bucks each. You can smell the cheese wafting through the smog on Broadway, and it meets the sweet smell of […]
after Night of the Rats by Mark Andres [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth][one_sixth]my sleep—[/one_sixth][one_sixth]it makes me[/one_sixth]fall down. [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth][one_sixth]my jazz[/one_sixth][one_sixth]how it [/one_sixth]croons & whistles. [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth][one_sixth]my lover’s [/one_sixth][one_sixth]spirit[/one_sixth]boogie. [one_sixth]Sacred[/one_sixth][one_sixth]buildings[/one_sixth][one_sixth]in me[/one_sixth]crumble. [one_sixth]Sacred[/one_sixth][one_sixth]music stand;[/one_sixth][one_sixth]holy[/one_sixth]talent-hands. [one_sixth]Sacred[/one_sixth][one_sixth]marquis,[/one_sixth][one_sixth]scarlet[/one_sixth]velvet. [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth][one_sixth]humble[/one_sixth][one_sixth]ladder[/one_sixth]chair. [one_sixth]Sacred[/one_sixth][one_sixth]moon who’s[/one_sixth][one_sixth]breathing[/one_sixth]fire. [one_sixth]Sacred[/one_sixth][one_sixth]aspect:[/one_sixth][one_sixth]slow burn[/one_sixth]in glass. [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth][one_sixth]you who[/one_sixth][one_sixth]leave me[/one_sixth]undisturbed. [one_sixth]Sacred[/one_sixth][one_sixth]perturbs me[/one_sixth][one_sixth]with lights[/one_sixth]and brushes. [one_sixth]Sacred[/one_sixth][one_sixth]neighbor’s[/one_sixth][one_sixth]voice[/one_sixth]aflame. [one_sixth]Sacred[/one_sixth][one_sixth]ivy[/one_sixth][one_sixth]razes[/one_sixth]my house. [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth][one_sixth]the rivulets;[/one_sixth][one_sixth]sacred[/one_sixth]the leaves. [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth][one_sixth]portal[/one_sixth][one_sixth]like[/one_sixth]half-lidded eye. [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth]the dust motes. [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth]the grace notes. [one_sixth]Sacred,[/one_sixth]the […]
1. You get in the car and I know you have something to tell me, not because I see the unspoken pooling in the curve of your eye, but because I feel you not speaking. 2. Afterwards we lie in bed, your head cradled beneath my clavicle; you say, What did you just think about? […]
One warm southern California day, I strolled up the sidewalk of my apartment building in West Hollywood and spotted my white seventy-something neighbor sitting at her window, her daily spot. “Hey Virginia!” I greeted her as I approached. She glared at me and asked, “Are you a racist?” “What????” The suddenness of the question and […]
Iphigenia’s morning Who recognized these crossroads, these poisonous bogs, false lights of will-o’-the-wisps on succulent marshes? Where are you today and what are you brewing in your copper cauldrons—what new, sudden vision of terrible fate led you to fulfill a familiar prophecy, to spool the skeins of wool? As usual, you are traveling. I am […]
On the wall hung a rifle. A brown rifle. Who knew how many years it had been there. From time to time, my father took it from between the deer, who seemed spooked, and cleaned it, blowing away the dust. He gazed at it, maybe daydreaming, maybe remembering old times, before getting up and hanging […]
(September 1884) Last Monday, in Etretat, Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatgay died. He was an Indian prince, a relative of His Highness, the Maharaja Gaikwar, Prince of Baroda in the province of Gujarath,in the Bombay Presidency. For about three weeks, we saw about a dozen young Indians passing through the streets: small, supple, with very dark […]
The trek across the asphalt and brutal heat coming from the sun made the sliding doors ahead appear as a mirage. New Mexico. New Mexico. Arizona. New Mexico. New Mexico. New Mexico. One out-of-state car in the entire row of parking spots. Probably one in the entire lot. I walked past my therapist’s office and […]
The dog sniffs a fire hydrant. The son shoots baskets until dark. The grass is sharply edged along the sidewalk. It takes only a moment for the man to forget he is father, husband, for his wife to become stone. He clenches his fist, brings back his arm, as though winding up for a pitch. […]
I was six years old the first time I saw a mystery novel on my older cousin’s bookshelf with my own name, Judy Bolton, on the spine. I couldn’t stop my finger from tracing the letters boldly printed across the front of that hardcover book. I like to think my father chose the name for […]
It’s still dark, 0500 on a December morning. From our ship out in the harbor we see the lights of San Diego sparkle on the horizon. We are excited by the lights. Because for so much of the last four months the horizon has merely blended with the blue of the ocean. Nearly one thousand […]
The pavement shimmers with the melted snow rush hour traffic has left in its wake. I cross the street and tuck myself inside the doorway of a closed office building. Flashing lights kaleidoscope from the alley leading to the back of the courthouse. I want to see the police car that will take Noor’s killer […]
On Monday, the neighbor’s kid is late coming over. When I hear her on the stairs, I call out, “Hey, you’re late. Nothing much is on.” Since returning from rehab five months ago, Syd’s been coming over to watch TV with me in my attic. Her parents asked me once if I’d mind keeping an […]
It all happened so fast. I keep trying to play it back in my head, moment by moment. But it’s like finding a plot hole in your favorite movie; it only leaves you with this dissatisfied feeling that you can’t shake. So, I’ll start at the beginning and crawl my way to where I am now, staring […]
“We can’t move! Are you crazy?” I yell at my parents. Mom raises one eyebrow, ready to lecture me about being disrespectful. Instead, she turns back to the chilaquiles in the frying pan. The crispy corn tortillas with eggs, queso fresco, and chile verde is my favorite breakfast. Usually, Mom doesn’t make them in August […]
With a red pen, the disease draws inside my abdomen a chain of volcanoes erupting on cue and rivers of lava sliding across organs, then hardening into rock, traces on my ovaries silhouettes of faces that will never be, scrawls on my uterus infinity symbols. The disease takes years to gestate. The disease claims dominion […]
two months at best the doc said, and we went home… —in drowning rain —in pregnant silence —in circular, useless thought * houseplants * * houseplants * * houseplants * (need watering) and we’re still out of milk… ‘better remember to— oh! a new lymphatic system! you need a new lymphatic system, too… ‘missing red […]
The story in Lidia Yuknavitch’s national bestseller, The Small Backs of Children, is centered around a picture taken by a photographer on assignment in a war zone. The picture is of a young girl caught midair at the moment an explosion kills her entire family. The novel is a combination of sexual fairy tale, anti-cautionary […]
IT’S BEEN A LOVELY DAY (EVEN IF I DID WANT TO KILL MYSELF) “I find that being in a family is the most excruciating possible way to be alive.” —Anne Enright, The Gathering Greetings all, After a pleasant Thanksgiving with Mom and my siblings where he won all the after-dinner games, my father suffered a […]
The power plant loomed out of the morning blackness, hulking above the Iowa corn fields like some menacing, malevolent, medieval castle. It was surrounded by trees in soft fall colors, planted there in an attempt to showcase it as environmentally friendly and to soften its sharp square lines; but you can’t hide that much ugly. […]
The air is thick with ambivalence. The residue of those both forgotten and pushed away. A watchtower too certain of its own authority. The slow grating of a mechanical door granting one passage in and out of the yard. The dull gray of clothing rendering life invisible against a backdrop of concrete walls. Barbed wire […]
In the middling Alabama unpopular girls grow tall and firm given the cover of hundred-foot magnolia tree towers. Given limbs too thick to rustle, betray, or give a girl away. Make it so you can never look up and say it wasn’t me. Never say you are not the girl who wobbled into magnolia arms […]
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