Jacky-boy is feeling good. Gliding down from the kind of high only primo-lino, top-notch, high-grade grass can supply. Feeling fine. Feeling mellow. The sound system in this apartment is primo-lino, top-notch, high-grade too. Nico and the Velvets ooze from the speakers. Nico, with her voice like dark honey, tells Jacky-boy she’ll be his mirror. Sometimes Jacky-boy thinks Nico, Lou, and the other Velvets are following him around. In every apartment with a record player and a party, this fine spring of ’67, there’s the album with the banana on the sleeve. Jacky-boy leans back, closes his eyes, a ..read more

“Why do they come up for air?” you asked one languid afternoon when we were ten, plucking a blade of grass from my backyard and splitting it into two clean halves. You handed me one half. I watched the pond, the little fish gulping air at the surface, sending out tiny ripples, popping bubbles when they suddenly disappeared.  “I don’t know,” I said. “Guess they’ll teach that in science.”  “Funny, isn’t it?” You traced the blade up and down your fingers. I drank in the scent of the sun-warmed grass—the scent that almost always clung to you, while you continued ..read more

“To be eaten by animals is the only option I want. Like the sky burial in Tibet,” I told the funeral service staff. The woman let out a deep sigh and shook her head again. She fished out a pamphlet from the plastic holder, slid it across the waxy desk beside the identical one that she had showed me an hour ago, and circled the Services section with her red pen twice. “Unfortunately, we are not in Tibet, Ms. Song. I apologize that our company can’t provide a more comprehensive list of services. Perhaps you can review this information with ..read more

We heard him coming before we saw him, a single cowbell disturbing the air of our hushed and private morning. Then the clop of ox hooves on macadam, the creak of wagon wheels, and he was among us. We watched him through parted curtains, watched each other watching him from across the street and down the block. He was a stranger, obviously. Short, his body square as a fencepost, dark hair hanging greasy down over his eyes. He fed the ox some hay and began unloading his cart right there on the street: tools, stacks of lumber, rusted-looking brackets and ..read more

No one warned Ana what she might find digging in the garden. Not boring earthworms or ants or pill bugs. Insects were of no interest to her. It was the other treasures. The ones that once had life above ground. The first bone she found snapped as she dug it out. So small and fragile. What had it been? Maybe Granny’s dog killed something and buried it. Though the stupid mutt couldn’t catch his tail most of the time. Ana unearthed a dozen yellowed bones, but no matter which way she put them together, it didn’t form anything. She needed ..read more

Lucy has heard there is a woman up in Boston in charge of cataloging the stars. This woman lists them and then puts them into categories. She has never married, and the astronomers, all of them men, listen to her.  Here in New Jersey, Lucy can hardly see the stars, but she would split them any which way if someone actually stopped to listen. Alphabetical, numerical, or by color like how her mother puts the handkerchiefs in her father’s dresser drawer. He’s not fancy—he works at the brewery in Orange—his nose just always runs. Hardly anybody listens to Lucy. “Why ..read more

It’s hard to tell in this light, but Angie’s got a scar, about the width of a fingernail. The scar is below her bottom lip: one short horizontal white line, raised, with two pale “U”-shaped impressions underscoring it, as if a pair of micro-shoes dangling from a clothesline. Angie and I, we’re lying together in her bed.  I ask her about the scar. She removes her hand from mine and runs her index finger under her bottom lip. It’s like she forgot it’s there. I’m surprised you noticed it, she says. It’s kinda dark in here. No, I say. I ..read more

Tamer huddles at the door, farthest from the little red kerosene heater, but there’s been no fuel for days. The bodies of four generations of his closest fifty relatives, and almost fifty of another family’s four generations in the unit below, keep the little cinder block apartment just warm enough in the winter of this latest discontent. Seventy-five years of constant pressure and intermittent war, but this time…. None of their four generations have witnessed this degree of depravity and desperation, nor fought so hard against the despair that chased after.  His beloved wife Sajida sits ..read more

Fernando opted for Marty’s death as his fourth wish.  The coven that had advertised a “five wishes” special for dogs initially refused to perform the spell on my cat. The women fretted that cats are not as selfless as dogs, and warned there could be “dire consequences.” I begged them. It was the tenth anniversary of Fernando coming into my life, and I wanted to give him a present that reflected the joy he had brought to me. They relented, and I returned home with Fernando to wait and see how he would use his gift. Fernando’s first wish had ..read more

Their mother had been a literature professor before all this happened. She wrote probing op-ed pieces for the local newspaper, and her short stories were frequently published in literary magazines. She was proud to have placed one of her stories in the prestigious Paris Review, and after that she’d set her sights on The New Yorker. Her demeanor had changed slowly from bold, serious, and kind to a simplistic sweetness and affability. She seemed to be joking all the time. In the past, her sense of humor had been astute and somewhat droll; now it was childlike. Her hair, which ..read more