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
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
Translated from Slovenian by Brian Henry GRUBER CANAL, LJUBLJANA Here I am on my old turf, my hand again in yours, going down the stairs, as long as summer, which is pale from many couples and families on … Continued
It feels to me as if I’ve always known Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. As if my brain were born and instantly had Invisible Cities in its matter to refer to. But that wasn’t the order of things. Pippi Longstocking came first and … Continued
(Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2012) As a writer, I create yearlong, but because of my position as an instructor of English composition, summer remains my season of “play,” three months when I treat writing like a full-time job. The … Continued
Do you smell that? How could it be, here, Where everything looks perfect? That sour tang Of a pile of one hundred degree garbage Behind the storefront you’re standing in Front of. Sniff the air. Look around. But hurry, You … Continued
I met our cover artist, Israeli photographer Elinor Carucci, about fifteen years ago. I’d been assigned to interview her about her debut series, Closer, by the then new arty high-concept online sex magazine, Nerve.com. Elinor’s pictures weren’t sexy—exactly. There … Continued
Let me tell you about my dream, my father said. Two black men walk into a bar and the rosy-faced, white barkeep says we don’t serve niggers in here and one of the men points to the other and says … Continued