It was the smell that scattered them. That stink of strange, new bodies—so thick you could hardly remember what the air before had smelled like. They ran for the trees, climbed up and hung close to the branches. Once they were up there, they couldn’t sit still. Silence would kill them. Stillness signaled the end. […]
Night Fun
The lake did not begin easily. For a foot it was sand and then five it was rocks and then after, it became sand again. This was the nearest beach. I was pulling off my bodysuit. On the hanger it had been crisp as a soap opera hospital. Yet when I’d pulled it on its […]
The Art of Forgetting
Jan’s name was a girl’s and didn’t match the heft of his body. His hair was short black squiggles and his skin the color of roasted chicken. He was full of contradictions, like, in spite of his name he was very much a man, with rippled shoulders and an Adam’s apple that protruded from his throat.
What I Remember of My Love Affair with the Bird
That night, like every night that year, long after dark had fallen, I climbed the tree at the top of the hill behind town hall. That night was different, though. When I’d almost made it to the top, instead of the bird with whom I’d been having an affair, I met a fellow border guard.
A Film That Will Make the Audience Feel Pure Joy
This is a film is about a filmmaker—let’s call her “A”—who, while preparing to shoot her next project, one she has been working on and developing for over twenty years, suddenly has a momentary crisis of faith. This crisis expresses itself by attempting to take all the aspects of her upcoming film work and, instead of shooting and editing them together, deciding to embody and involve them within the patterns of her daily life.
Another Cake
After the fake boyfriend left, the guests kept coming. They came every day, with their prayer books and coconut candies, careful not to slip on the driveway—it’s icy—offering cold cheeks for a kiss. My aunts took their coats, their cakes. I went down to take their sorries, then hid in my old room.
Untitled
Like most people, and especially most people, I hate going to readings. A reading is an empty concert, the improv comedy you see because your boyfriend is in an improv comedy troupe, the phallo-phobic bachelorette party (no strippers, no penis stuff!). No penis stuff?
Holiday
In the middle of the night on the 15th of December, a small Christmas tree farm was vandalized, and fifty-three Christmas trees had their tops cut off. The vandals left the trees decapitated by the side of the road.
Temptation
Visitors to the region are encouraged to view the great falls from a cable car—and to ride a ferry into the mist of the falls—and to stand on the cliffs from afar and squint at the falls through a telescope—and to bore a tunnel into the rock and peer through a hole into the falls from behind them—and to watch the falls glow at night under multi-colored lights.
Parents
So they will not be able to hear our bodies against each other, we turn on the TV. Since we do not usually watch the TV, it occurs to us that the TV suggests we are making noise that requires a TV to cover up.