To be diagnosed with a rare disease is to have wildness pressed upon you. You are not exactly the secretive quarry that birders travel the world to add…
1. Visiting Professor Florin C. Merisoreanu feels the pain in the left side of his chest more keenly on Tuesdays than on Thursdays. On Tuesdays he shares an office on the Upper West Side, at …
The old priest did not seem well. He approached the altar, moving haltingly, pausing some? times to look at the ground before taking a step. A younger priest went before him. When they reached the …
Sé que me llamo Victorio. Sé que creen que estoy loco (versión cuya insensatez a veces me enfurece, otras tan sólo me divierte). Sé que soy diferente a los demás, pero también mi padre, mi …
I began, an apology springing instantly to my lips. I took a step back. She jumped to her feet and turned for a shopping cart that I hadn’t associated with her that was in the nearby bushes. She …
The priest asked if I would like to light the candles. There was a holder near the altar with several candles and then one large candle standing to the side. The large candle was decorated with …
I know my name is Victorio.
A balloon-popper ran loose in the Party Store. Furk, the Assistant Manager, hunched over the blurry security monitors, his wet blue pupils chasing chubby kids in flip-flops through the aisles of our …
You had explained it so many times, but I didn’t want to pretend again to understand how those cockroaches birthed live babies. I was thinking about the bugs that hit our windshield, the ones whose …
Dr. Pendergraph tells me there’s something wonky with my rods and cones. He says this as I stare into his great white machine with the tiny hot air balloons shuttering before my eyes; I always …
I asked Grandpa how he got the silver medal he’s so proud of, and he said he got it for shooting a Northern Viet bastard right in the face. He said the Northern soldier was on top of another …
A polar bear travels two hundred miles and arrives in Iceland. It climbs onto the shore with a great lumbering. It is an accident of travel. It is an animal in a country with no animals like him. I …
One night my mother dreamed that she turned into a large, white bird. She was standing naked before a narrow, tall mirror. She still had only one breast, the scar on the left side no longer a zipper …
I want to tell you about an album I’ve been listening to a lot lately. The Best of: My Younger Thinking. Side A is one long toddler snarl with a fiddle whimpering low in the mix. Side B shows a …
Every other Wednesday evening, the Northwest District Small Group of the Mendota Heights Church of the Holy Redeemer held a Bible study at one of the attendees’ homes. Starting at six p.m., they …
The speck of dirt lived on the floor of the apartment, and somehow had, until now, avoided the broom. It was, after all, just one speck, and all its brethren had spilled out ahead of it and been …
But Penelope is waving at something over Janis’s shoulder. Janis turns and sees three people walking out of a clump of bare ash trees towards the house, which squats on top of a rocky hill behind …
“Patty,” the man called out. “Patty, I’ve been looking for you.” I stopped what I was doing and said hello. The man leaned on his crutches and smiled. I liked the man because he was a …
The snow was a wildcat that night, unpredictable and bright. You sat in the passenger seat, one hand screwed to the handle for safety. You should have been driving, but you called yourself a …
Morning comes and he pauses beside my bed. He struggles to breathe, his breath brushing my face. Without opening my eyes, I make a space where he can curl up in my arms. I barely feel him, …