“All of these are experiments in figuring out actually how close these topics are. I make them appear much closer than they appear normally. Things that we compartmentalize. Things that we consider distant and close, either spatially or in time.”
On “Unlikely Designs”: An Interview with Katie Willingham Read More »
“It’s becoming especially important for men to actively work toward envisioning and embodying versions of masculinity distinct from the patriarchal manhood reinforced by much of American culture.”
“The Maze Becomes Your Life”: An Interview with Alex McElroy Read More »
A boat slips beneath the harbor bridge
a letter that says, by the time you get this,
I will be gone.
“Lorca,” by Bruce Bond Read More »
I felt no fear, though my legs were thin, hardly bigger than the barrel of the gun, and my arms were strained. I felt no fear at the prospect of shooting this man, of watching his body crumple, then dragging the corpse inside, quickly so the heat didn’t escape from the house.
“The Bridesmaid,” by Bonnie Jo Campbell Read More »
I am reading about my ex-boyfriend in my friend’s story. In it, he and she are lovers who meet in hotels whenever and wherever. His blue eyes are what give the fiction away.
“My Friend and My Ex or The Power of Fiction,” by Beth Aviv Read More »
And the girls are always smiling, their shoulders
encased in graduation black
or bared down to the peeled-back petals of the
prom dress
“Co-Ed Found,” by Sharon Olds Read More »
Even the body, so impossibly tuned and tensioned:
all of us crimped, folded and thrumming just so, they say,
like a trillion trillion guitars or glass harmonicas, tiny
symhonies of sound—so why not metaphysics?
“M-Theory, or, A Piece for Eleven Strings,” by T.J. McLemore Read More »
Everything the old woman said was true.
Then she suffered a heart attack and died in Ruth’s arms.
“Letter,” by Raymond Carver Read More »
When they arrive I’ve crawled my way to the bathroom, peeled off my underwear, and, with the strength of a 155-pound Hercules who by now has lost half the blood in his body, heaved myself into the bathtub in an attempt to clean up.
“Purgatory,” by Michael O’Rourke Read More »
Any writer who takes Henry James’s advice seriously, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost,” will end up, sooner or later, looking for the hidden story—hidden because nobody was listening for it, and because the water is rising, and because there but for the grace of God go you and I.
“The Writer’s Ark,” by Nancy Willard Read More »
