can this be i? Actually, I had walked into the hallway and disappeared into the bedroom briefly. Several of them danced and I heard Vida say about me, “He disappeared…

Read more

From the novel Silverview

Read more

the professor of archaeology In the small Southern town where Corinne has rented an apartment for the summer, she has found a yoga studio. It’s quainter than her usual one…

Read more

Krems, whose splendor the Arab geographer al-Idrisi celebrated in 1153 as surpassing, in his view, that of Vienna, today resembles Vineta, the city submerged by the waters, among whose streets…

Read more

Justine was twenty-one years old that spring, Jeffers, the age at which a person begins to show her true colors, and in many ways she was revealing herself to be…

Read more

Called out of retirement. Already onto other things. Netflix, Roku haiku, one patient Basho letter at a time. Onto berating the orange sun god, with his changeable guard of hagiographers…

Read more

how high? that high He had his stick that was used mostly to point at your head if your head wasn’t held up proudly. I still like that man—Holger! He…

Read more

H e is a nondescript man. I’d never used that adjective about a client. Not until this one. My seventeenth. He’d requested an evening time and came Tuesdays at six-thirty.…

Read more

Mr. Hutchinson took his pipe out of his mouth. “Got a new dog, I see.” He was wearing his buff-colored work suit, which he wore every day because, he said,…

Read more

When I came into the kitchen, Ward was using a knife to help his wife, Irene, peel the skin from two buffalo tongues. The skin was discarded in a small…

Read more

I. THE PERVERTED MESSAGE The sky was roseate at the end of the day, in the east rather than in the west — all wrong — when I encountered a mother and…

Read more

Back from lunch, I stood in the early June sun pulling two-by-sixes for somebody else’s load when Mike, the yard manager, came out of the office and yelled, “All right,…

Read more

As much as I love her, I blame Astrid. Astrid told my wife, Corinne, that she could achieve happiness if only she’d leave me. It sounded simple. “Leave that guy,…

Read more

Cyrus Alkana was my father, and if you can recognize this name, you belong to an inconspicuous substratum of humanity — a coterie, if such things can still be said…

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

This is a slow train anyway, and it has slowed some more for the curve. Jackson is the only passenger left, and the next stop is about twenty miles ahead.…

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more