PLUMMETING
1 In the played-out strip mine, during our night hike, my father led us Scouts along a trail that peaked at the narrow crest of worthlessness that pitched down into darkness, and I knelt to grip the ground with my hands, certain I could fall. Every boy who noticed said nothing. My father talked me to my feet and guided ... Read More
INCIDENT IN BERLIN
The garden was taken over by the azaleas. The multitude of flowers stood dormant in the late Sunday afternoon. There was also a palm tree (Sergei still couldn’t get used to the palm trees), a poplar, and plenty of ivies shooting up the sunlit white stucco wall. Most of the trees were planted by the previous owner in the twenties ... Read More
Wrack
The ocean doesn’t ask forgiveness. Overnight in a sudden fit of disgust it thrusts mound upon mound of seaweed on the shore, the pale sand a tangle of mahogany and rust for half a kilometer. Then slowly over several months, one high tide at a time, it takes each lamina back as though it had forgotten the story it was ... Read More
Niagara Falls
High-stakes
Picture a man of average stature and looks beside a woman of average stature and looks on a flight to New York from small Midwestern towns. Picture him telling her he is a high-stakes mogul on his way to put a bow on a deal involving an entire block of buildings, what he’d like her to imagine as skyscrapers. ... Read MoreInterview with Adam Schwartz
Adam Schwartz’s debut collection of stories, The Rest of the World, won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2020 prize for fiction
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90’s Demi-God Dreams
Like most great ideas, it takes shape in your best friend's bedroom. It's ‘92, and you're alternating between The Sunday's
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Autumn Leaves in Johannesburg
It’s 10am in Lagos — probably 11am someplace else — and I can’t be bothered to leave my bed. Power has just been restored,
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The Floating Theater: Our New Season
(2120-21-22 Offerings) All for one fee, ending in Winter. The Scarlet Ibis. Lieutenant Frank, the TV detective, returns from his
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Letter to You Which I Know You Won’t Read So Why Do I Bother?
Let me start again. I had an opening paragraph I decided to take out. You were wrong, but that paragraph
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Polished Penny Loafers
Social Security office. God, how she hated that place. How they put you through questioning -- just short of frisking.
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Inheritance
in the backyard the ticker-tape of young paper birch flickers in the breeze a chain-link fence keeps the wild out
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The lighter black
the dublin quays, night on the river, a little way west and quite nearby to heuston. cars moving forward without
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Summer Love/Death Song
The cicadas came out of the ground just as the world started heating up. They had not seen the sun
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April 2021: Recrudescence
A fresh outbreak, another strain and here we are again, delinked. An error message, the zizz of the overheated laptop,
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