It doesn’t take any particular talent to get laid  Mr. Sayfer proclaims in his unannounced presentation to the 8th grade where we sit...

I read a poem that takes up half the book. There are boys crying in the cornfields of its pages. A living will tucked into the stanzas of...

I. jennette, i’ve encouraged my mother to delete her will. it’s unnecessary. would there be a squabble, the kind siblings wield when they...

Shreds of what was once a suit hang tattered from his thin shoulders. Looking like he has walked a thousand miles, he leans against the...

My room’s view is of a Home Depot at the base of a giant American flag dying violently in the sunset. Perched against more pillows than...

Travelogue I have been to Idaho, but it didn’t leave much of an impression. Unlike Utah, with its starched, bunchy mesas and salt flats....

I befriended a spider mother at work. She lives in a metal door frame. Well, not in the frame, but in a part of the frame where the door...

After I’d moved to New York, I spent a lot of time visiting my downstairs neighbors, Stephane and Michele. The young French couple lived...

Saturday, April 21, 6:30 a.m. Bishop’s Lodge Easter weekend in Sangre de Cristos Mountains: “Blood of Christ.” It is the mid-1980s. My...

He’s a bit of a bombast, that man of mine. His dark hair shines – as if oil is creeping out of his skull. It slickens his joints, jaw,...

Two women lie together against the cold bed, hips and elbows sharp against winter- hardened foam. Hands marked by bedlice, clasping damp...

1. Everything we do—every dance, every yoga practice, every story, every breath—is an offering to the divine—the divinity outside and the...

Vladimir came to America from Russia in 1998.             “All of my buddies, they gambles.”             And tonight, he is my Lyft...

An anorexic walks into Chili’s. She opens the menu and dies from shock.   An anorexic walks into Chili’s. She doesn’t open the menu,...

I was the queen of water, even if no one knew. Ten years old, teeming with secrets I was called innocent and little and cute. I was...

Settling into a wingback lounge chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I allow myself to rest in the sweeping view overlooking...

Matter is the problem of the house, which is the problem with me. Matter and the problem of the house can be neither created nor...

after Brian Doyle   Consider the word takhi for a moment. Written, the word might remind you of a Taki, the preservative-loaded,...

For a long time she’d been grappling with the question of why she bothered to write. She knew it wasn’t to connect with potential readers...

Bruce and Mavis, Mavis and Bruce. They blow through my hair like the Holy Spirit. Our double helixes have never danced, but they are...