Think the word “lonely.” See the little girl moping in the corner of the schoolyard or the homeless man hunched over a grate. When one reads that some well-known person was lonely, isn’t there always a small twinge of surprise? One thinks, it must mean ‘lonely’ on the inside. To be really alone in the world is to be young, innocent—or to be so much...
Can we “be” as a statement? Exist as an exploration? Represent a philosophy with our own bones? Norwegian author Edy Poppy’s curious interplay of life and writing unravel in her novel Anatomy. Monotony.
How would you live, if you knew your actions—even the most intimate ones—could be...
It’s late. We’re hungry. We catch a bus in the direction of Kentish Town. I run up the stairs, while the American buys tickets...
The fear had to be taught. It wasn’t something women were born with. Kirstin birthed the fear in them, not like giving birth, but like controlling a robot.
It was Kirstin’s job to make women think their body odors were bad. To scare them at the signature of their own scent, sour them on sweat, breath, sticky under the arms, wet between the legs. The product...
[Risto—Aristofano Al’Kair—is a rarity in contemporary Italy, an immigrant success story. Out of Mogadishu, he’s earned citizenship and lives now in Naples, with a wife who’s a native. Here, the two take advantage of a rare quiet moment.]
“The kids,” he found himself saying. “Such a, a wonder.”
“Amore, yes...
Every Monday, Mock City. You get up at five am, but instead of driving north to the airport, you drive south through strip malls and suburbs. You drive to the police academy where you were trained and now work one morning a week. Mock City interrupts the parking lot of the academy, a rectangular building with vinyl siding, handwritten signage, and...
I’m afraid of my son. I’ve known a terror beyond terror because of my beautiful boy. He’s beloved by other children, his teachers, and my husband, his father. I never tell anyone what’s really going on, especially his father. Not only would he not want to hear it, he wouldn’t believe it and might consider it a betrayal. Besides, even if I could...
In a cemetery, the same darkness as that between stars grows moss. Time unlocks tunnels and tunnels behind those rocks.
In a warm pasture overlooking the Austrian village of Stockerau, six-year-old Ernst Herbeck nibbles a long blade of grass, back against an oak, inhaling the loamy moistness of cow patties, daydreaming of Berlin.
He has never been there.
He will never go.
He has seen photographs.
He was too...
The Fog The fog came unpredictably as a gift (after the sticky sleep and awkward, stoic morning). I smelled toast but never saw it. The door closed and I cried a little in the bathtub. Right, the fog - Hanging over the hole where the Nets will play someday, sliding down Dean Street as a happy hour pickleback might at half-time of Germany vs. Austria. It came...
“Gonna tonight go kill us a boy,” Elzira said, rising to full height. “Gonna tonight go make it right for Dodie.” But the candle-lit circle of cross-legged girls sitting around Elzira looked away from her, to the dark corner under the rafters, to the bottle and hammer that’d been laid atop a stack of cinderblocks, strewn with strings of holiday lights and dried...
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I am you and who I see is me, if anything
happens it happens in me, it happens in you,
I see the lilac shadow of a tree and it seems
to me...
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