Grandad read me manga, tales rendered in Chinese ideograms that made no sense, on the settee exploring a black-white world, antics of a time-travelling genie-bot.
Kin where kin are; The Armoury; Last Rights; Nota Bene; Playing in the Wind
The children we won’t have; How my life compares to that of Bonnie Parker; Bob Lucy’s apple juice; An evening with Messier 13; Tri tri try
I wake at 3:00 a.m. and fry two eggs until they burn. My husband sleeps upstairs. He used to photograph my eyelids, knuckles, fine bones of my pelvis.
It’s All Broken Up in There
Often, on house calls, the clients meet my Dad with lemonade or tea, occasionally fresh milk. As we pull off the highway and into Uncle Harry's drive this afternoon, I watch the long, empty porch and its lonely swing pass by. Summers, we played with my cousin, Brett, here on the farm, my brother and me. We'd fish the pond. I tried fishing last summer with Dad, but he only made it an hour until the heat made him dizzy. Spells of “vertigo,” he called it, but not an inner ear thing, something with his heart. That Kareem Abdul-Jabbar disease. I can never remember the name.
The Misfortunes of Others
Look on the bright side. You can always come back and burn the place down, Pierre thought, slowly removing his framed degree from the wall.
The Ghost of Philip Guston
The artist smoked cigars—one on his porch with a glass of mescal, another during an evening stroll through the neighborhood. One cigar a day, maybe two. "Nice cigars," he said.
Eyeburn
"Too many eyes", Edward thinks. The tingling areas on his skin grow hotter as he navigates the bustling sidewalk. He makes an about-face and, parting the crowd with his arms, hurries back toward his apartment building...