What Did Noah Do For a Living?
https://arkencounter.com/ Kentucky's 510 ft. Ark Encounter. Pine, not the customary gopher wood. $40 adult/day. Unlimited 7 day combo $99, zip line included. “The Souk” gift store. 1st deck's snack stand. Ararat Ridge Zoo: ride a donkey/camel. Rainbows light up the Ark. Spend the night onboard. Girls on deck 2. Boys on deck 3. Chaperones $42 apiece: 2 male, 2 female ... Read More
The Hills of Ojców When I Was Small
Jan Lechoń and his lover lie side by side, like two question marks, on a bed of saffron sheets. Jan Lechoń’s lover faces the wall (faces away from Jan), head on a pillow of straight hands, knees pulled up, legs crossed at the ankles. You will come with me? Jan asks, running a finger slowly along his lover’s spine. He ... Read More
On Quitting Coffee
That awful fall of 2016 needs no introducing. But we all have our associations with it. My sister had just then learned she was pregnant for the first time, and I sensed the political calamity registered as little more than background chatter against her joy. For me, though, November truly did feel like the end of the world. Antarctica was ... Read More
This Could Be Anywhere, I Could Be Anyone
I leave the store after a small, middle-aged domestic thrill: A good deal on bathroom rugs ($14.99 for two). As soon as I walk across the parking lot to my car, I know I’ll return them tomorrow. I don’t need them, but I need something. I weave through the lot and see a teenager and his girlfriend sitting in a ... Read More
If There’s an Angel of Lost Gloves
my father didn’t believe and didn’t wait for holy intercession. He mislaid his gloves faster than his temper. He wasn’t ...
The Long Walk in April [Howick, Northumberland]
New bracken unfurls Sea-horse fronds born in grass Gnarled Ent shadows whorl Busy silence pulses past Sea-horse fronds born in grass Solitary ...
Laced Intentions
I hate lace curtains and their contortionist ways. Their holes deforming like Munch’s scream at the slightest tug— underdogs in ...
Mademoiselle Ravoux
--on the painting by Van Gogh The sunflowers grow taller this year. They nearly touch the sun. I climb a ...
Elegy for the Turtle
I will be sad for a moment because she used words like “quotidian”—and “it’s ok to discuss your $900 compressor ...
Dancing with a Doorknob
Everything you’d want in a dance partner was there in Betsy’s basement, Friday night girl party, stereo blasting the Everly ...
My Lanyard
As a boy I had no idea what to do with my hands. At Camp Hastings YMCA camp, where the ...
Sangen Jaya
It’s been eighteen, nineteen years. I triangulate my way around unnamed streets and pass by the noodle shop, a police ...
Thursday Morning in October on Salem Mubarak Street
At the bakalah, I part the heavy plastic that covers the doorway, and aiming a Salamalakum in the direction of ...
We Want It to Be History
Australians battled the flood until a bird with a leaf in its mouth showed them the way to Mt. Broome ...
Nine Boxes
1. Kitchen Items Pots and pans. Mugs. Beer glasses from various bars across the country. Matching plates and bowls with ...
Eyes On Him
-“Beauty has a strangeness”-- Linda Gregg, from her poem, “Fragments” Mottled, veins afloat, shadows flicker, the lid dips, and resists, ...
Anovulation
Six months later, when your period returned to an empty house, curtains drawn, I bought an ovulation test; you were ...
Meet the Fitbittiest
We are proud to announce the Fittbittiest, the much improved-upon watch slash gate-keeper of the body slash mentor slash Yoda ...
The Stone Menagerie
In Tanzania, a thesaurus of birds perch stiffly, petrified by the alkaline slime of Lake Natron. These avian stones, these ...
Hibernation
And so Natalie came to see sleep as the solution. It made her feel like barfing a little, like the ...