I’ve been thinking about this theme of Babel Fish for almost a year now, and it’s never stopped seeming like a broad and suggestive portal for the pieces gathered here. For those who aren’t familiar with Douglas Adams’s 1979 novel … Continued
—MILTON KESSLER What if California wasn’t the end of possibility? Gleaming out past Alcatraz and Coronado— someplace real to reach, if only you could walk across the water. Forget Manifest Destiny. What is ever manifest? What is destined? Today … Continued
Translated from French by Andrew S. Nicholson listen up earthen colors too late your laughter eats the sun for rabbits for chameleons grasp my body between two long lines when famine becomes light sleep sleep we feel so heavy blue … Continued
This morning I scrubbed a charred spatula. It wasn’t light out yet. I hadn’t been able to sleep through the night so I made myself get out of bed in the dark, made myself go downstairs and hit the kitchen’s … Continued
One year into the twentieth century, eight orchid hunters landed on the shores of the Philippines intent on wresting orchids from their marshy homes. As soon as I could talk, I wanted to be a collector, but of … Continued
When my father broke parole and went back to prison, my face widened with red pimples of hearsay. For hours, I leaned on the refrigerator door, tasting rotten food. I slipped in the woods, stropped a buck knife, let go. … Continued
In the Balkans, nothing vanishes completely. In my hometown, people give directions like this: You go two blocks past the oil refinery, and then one block up, past the military barracks, and then turn left. . . . The oil … Continued
Translated from Italian by Gini Alhadeff Hannelore, a girl without a fixed residence, is the only witness to a fire in the apartment of Fraulein von Oelix. A modest, gray afternoon. Vitreous. The fraulein is a kind woman, wilted … Continued
My love wanted a glass of water so I pulled an old, plastic, dirty cup out of my bag and offered it to him to fill with water. My love said that if he were put in a poem, no … Continued
In our field is a bull. It is just the head—the horns sticking out from the snow. The bull died suddenly and the owners wanted to know why and so my husband sent the lab a tissue sample. In the … Continued
1. It was one of the only places in their house where logic and order did not prevail. He had dreams about it sometimes; in one, the drawer appeared in the guise of a giant shipboard valve that, when opened, … Continued
Gleason developed the WUG Test in 1958: This is a WUG. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two _______. This man zibs. A man who zibs is a _______. The children made the … Continued
Emily Dickinson thinks she looks like a kangaroo. I can see the resemblance. The unexpectedness in the eyes, the readiness to leap. Emily Dickinson has caressing lips, tucked for now and always in a pert little smile, content … Continued
Translated from Spanish by Pablo Medina 1. GORING AND DEATH At five in the afternoon. It was five sharp in the afternoon. A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon. A basket of lime … Continued
The candidate has a spoilage in his head, an icky bit, a creep that chews for him alone when stuffing up the local grub. At every stop, he shovels in the pies and dogs, the beer, … Continued
Everyone was so into Angel. He drove this car with purple undercarriage lights and fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror. His girl Francine was with him sometimes, her arm hanging out the car window like she owned his … Continued
At the end he was tilted that he might remain in sleep. If he woke he would know just how bad things were, would cough and dislodge the intubation tube. A certainty. Fluids in, fluids out. Tilted his head below … Continued
“Where were you last night?” It’s not that she cared. His absence hadn’t kept her up. She’d fallen asleep as usual to the Home Shopping Network, last chance at that dragonfly brooch for only $19.95. She’d woken with the credit … Continued
Heaven must be dying on time at the end of a long life, family at one’s hands, goodbyes hovering like hummingbirds, which, if one is absolutely still, sometimes land on a finger and sip honey as if from nowhere. One … Continued
The way she wears her sweater is so Sunday. If her parents were here she’d say why don’t you go watch Dancing With the Stars. It is every generation’s job to feel deprived. If she had kids she’s scared of … Continued