David SchumanSUBJECT You’re scrubbing grout in the bathroom when the old guy next door shouts through the wall. Wants to know if you’ll come over and see his paintings. He’s been bugging you ever since you moved in, convinced you’ll…
Rebecca EntelONYX Raised voices hush a room, lower eyes. But the sound of skin hitting skin. But a slap. The sound, an air-thickening sponge, slogged from one room to the next. It stilled the action in each. Heads looked away…
Michelle E. CrouchTHE CURATED HOME When maintaining the curated home, one must behave much as if were one were employed at a museum. The collections management database, however, will not exist on a computer or even on yellowed paper files.…
Martha CooneyCORMAC I was kicking my football along the road in our estate, timing my kicks to each time the curbstones changed color. They were painted in the Ireland flag’s green, white, and gold, just to let anybody foolish enough…
Elizabeth MosierEVERYTHING MUST GO “Here’s what you do,” a friend said to my husband, eyeing the dreck on our front porch, residuals from a previous sale: the single chair, incomplete set of plates, fancy dolls our daughters never played with,…
Frances BrentINTERIORS 1. I’ve been thinking about the fish in a glass bowl–loneliness, silence, wasted beauty. The fish appears in my imagination, passes through the reef hole, travels here and there—weightless and random cartridge. I watch its inch-long vanishing spur.…
Thaddeus RutkowskiENCOUNTER WITH THE DEVIL You dirty rat,” I said. I was talking to the devil himself. I spoke without trepidation, even though I was addressing a creature with horns and a pointed tail. “You don’t have a monopoly on…
Nahid RachlinZAHRA When Shamsi and her two small children moved into some rooms in my aunt’s house, they looked very poor. My aunt, the owner of the house, took pity on them and reduced the rent by 30 toomans a…
Samuel ThompsonSONATA FOR CLAVIER AND VIOLIN, K. 526 (September 2008) The day of playing with Mr. G.’s transitional bow– yes, the one that they used in Mozart’s time– is fresh in my psyche as I work to taper and bloom,…
John GreyTHE GAME’S LAST BREATH Transfusions come and go like players off the bench. This drip is offense. This pill is defense. He’s sleepy in the middle of the day. Why speak to visitors, when a coma’s on offer? For…
Michael Neal MorrisWAKING The straps at the top of the mask cut a little into his forehead. The top of his skull seemed to be burning, and for a silly moment he wondered if he had any hair left. Of…
Beth KephartSCRABBLE I said it would be nice (look how simple I made it: nice) not to be marooned in the blue-black of night with my thoughts, I said the corrugated squares of the downstairs quilt accuse me, I said…
Katherine FallonGIN A JUNIPER SLICK Gin a juniper slick, drain-bound, spilled by the wrist that meant it this time. The glass-floor desert, the sugared rim, glister in cloud-gauze sunlight. To win, to be as cold and lasting as the snow.…
Lynn LevinTHE ASK SANDWICH The TSA lady at Newark Airport had a nice touch, and Josie enjoyed the pat down. The blue gloves slid under her arms, along her sides, down one leg, then the other. They searched, discerned. They…
Anna StrongDEAR COUCH Dear Couch, I want to zip myself in a pocket and watch baseball. You say sit down and stop moving the furniture around. A square of light hits my palm from the gap in the curtain teeth…
Rachel PastanBONES Once, they’d read aloud to each other all the time: letters, menus, fliers posted on telephone poles along the streets. Missing dog, black, one white ear, answers to Shayna. For sale, stereo cabinet, some damage. Telugu lessons, $10…
Blake MartinThe Rise of the Selfie in the 21st Century Click on any photo to see it at full size. Why do we take self-portraits? As someone who has always felt the urge to take pictures of myself, I don’t…
Kathryn J Allwine BacasmotHUMMING Listening to Glenn Gould’s albums of Bach’s keyboard music, you will hear a noise in the background: the sound of someone humming. As a child I gravitated toward the Gould recording on the shelf that held…