We’d been to this funeral home twice before—at least, I think we had? I guess it sounds heartless but they blend together, with their signs calligraphed with the family name, the floral arrangements and folded programs, the standard chairs in the standard rows. Even the silence feels uniform in these places. They must all use …
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When the Los Angeles Dodgers won the 2020 World Series last year, I was sitting on the couch with my youngest daughter Rosette, 25, here in Riverside, California, 55 miles from Dodger Stadium in LA, and on the phone with my mother, Gabrielle Gertrude Leu Straight Watson, 85, who was sitting alone in her mauve …
Sometimes Gordon and me hang out in the apartment in our Stormtrooper armor. We play cards or watch TV or drink beer, the same things you’d do in your street clothes, but we do them in full gear. Except for helmets—it’s about 300 degrees inside those things, and we’re not looking to kill ourselves. On …
A voice hailed Noah Forge from across the broad river, and Forge peered through the fog that hung low over the clearing. On the eastern bank, a single traveler sat upon a great ashen-colored horse, a broad yellow duster draping his shoulders. The traveler raised his arm and called for passage. Forge shucked off his …
When they move to Providence, ten miles from the nuclear power plant, Shannon’s parents bring her to the clinic for potassium iodide pills. They wait in a line that snakes through the shelves of shampoo and condoms with other families who live in the emergency planning zone. Shannon’s parents are adjunct classics professors. They both …
I. On my walk to heaven, a man named Shekau told me I would be invisible, and I believed him perfectly. When you are a boy like me, you can walk out in public in torn shorts and a dirty shirt, oversized or undersized, buttoned up or down. A rolled-up scarf wound about the top …
Egg The girl is conceived. Her atmosphere is viscous and close, as intimate as a tongue. As she grows, she eats the egg of her own making, raw and without choice. Her belly streaks fat, her haunches muscle. Her birth is a farmer’s breakfast: egg, ham, and bacon, with a wide napkin to sop up …
The Packers game on the radio saved them from having to talk. When Mike turned onto County Road QQ, Dash switched off the game so they could concentrate. Mike slowed at every mailbox to read the numbers until they saw the sign for Heron Lane. It was a novelty road sign, the letters too large …
The Mayan showed John Woo’s “Bullet in the Head” at midnight one Saturday during our Christmas break. We had a couple of weeks before school would start up again. Snow had been falling all day, since the afternoon before, and thick flakes swarmed the windshield, furry and unwieldy, yet graceful, too. Our tires slid and …