Amuse-Bouche

Fred Moten’s writing is being lost. Or found. Or the kind of lost you want—the wind whipping through trees in Alabama or words that come in meaningful bursts, though you are unsure of the meaning or the source of the bursts. You reel in a mad maelstrom of feeling, entirely precognitive but at once familiar, […]

After the ring, strip naked Peel your original self like a grape, become unrecognizable when you meet yourself in the mirror. When you meet your husband’s colleagues, just after they get a whiff of baby vomit, glance at your waistline, ignore your proffered hand, say: I am raising our children. Watch them head for the […]

Waiting room TV wanna know “CREDIT NO GOOD?” in blinkedy blue letters blue plastic chairs hard as rocks blue scrubs and blue shower caps on the nurses and docs blue-eyed po-lice ++all in blue beat my cousin black and blue the PA system sayin ++code blue ++code blue I wonder if they talkin bout him […]

I don’t know how he figured it was me who told the school he had AIDS, but he found out—and finds me under the bleachers, smoking a cigarette. He even throws the first punch, which I think is out of character for the rich bitch star of our high school track team, headed to Yale […]

Picking Blueberries My mother’s colander: metal with small, heart-shaped mouths— It was an old thing, probably my grandmother’s before, just like that blueberry bush in our backyard, planted 50-odd-years ago, a natural inheritance. We never used the colander except when picking blueberries, and even that became a hobby my parents left for their aging relatives […]

On a heavy Saturday in June, Steven and I wait for strangers to pound through my mother’s front door, but the strangers never come. Exclamation points, dotting our Craigslist posts like lollipops, have failed to lure buyers for the Vintage, Mint Condition! Italian provincial dining room set! and the Like New! Singer Sewing machine. No […]

A Thin Season (For a young man beheaded for listening to Western pop tunes in his father’s grocery store) It is a thin season culling the air of blue breath choked sudden as a sword at the throat of a young infidel the forbidden pop tune of his innocence still playing in the annals of […]

I am interested in different forms of communication (verbal, written, body language, etc). I generally paint the female form in uncomfortable positions and circumstances to see if an idea, emotion, or critique can be communicated using bodies, symbols, and titles. People are gregarious by nature. We are not meant for solitary existence. Our need to affectively communicate with each other […]

My last living memory is of my husband carrying my half-conscious body away from the thick heat and clinging wetness of the rice field. Something has bitten my right heel, leaving a crescent of bloody marks. He places me on our cart, jumps on, and prods Sakhi, our cow, into a jingling trot. Sweat and […]

Moorings Suppose you say water. We’re on the boat, making for Babson Island, one of three tiny beach slabs that connects at high tide. We set anchor, mark the drift, account for wind, row to the shallows. This place has sand dollars. You find some, bring them to me. I will wrap them in tissue […]

The train ride from Osaka to Arashiyama took an hour. Noriko rested her head against her husband’s shoulder and drifted off into a light sleep. She was exhausted from long days working at the Tesagara Tea Room and taking care of their two-year-old son, Eiji. Disembarking at the station, Ichiro instructed the cab driver to […]

Each Time We Enter Costco I cannot help myself. I have to say, “See that? Free hearing tests!” To which I add, “Can’t hear me?” He ignores that, so, “Eh? Eh? What’s that?” His brittle bearing flashes mad. The cart gets filled in silence. Stuff we do not need in ludicrous amounts: pintos, potato chips, […]

My “Peoplescapes” are colorful and exaggerated narratives about the condition of today’s world. Our culture is designed to ignore certain fundamental truths, causing great obstacles to our continuing existence. Addressing these issues by capturing moments of ordinary life confronting us all, while sharply observing and commenting, I’m able to shine a light on these subjects […]

Longing, as dirge The wood in warp and disrepair has had its share of everything. Never drinking not even rye and absinthe puddled sickly on this old porch. No, the sazerac’s candy burn fails to impress this sagging terrace— it smolders on as coal beneath the eves. Although my foot glances toward his thigh and […]

Bonnie started stripping the moment her bedroom door latched behind her. She undid her blouse buttons. The white fabric stuck to her back, and she peeled it off and let it crumple to the floor. She tossed it so that it sat in a small, sweaty mountain in the corner of her room. Next to […]