Schisma For ten euro, you’ll rest easy aboard Posidonia, the smoothest ship in all of Schisma. Happily we’ll sail to Kalydon, just twenty minutes across…

  In fact, wir sein ready,Was das anconzernt.—Kurt M. Stein, Die Schönste Lengevitch, 1925 being on an island, having a child, writing, and having a…

It’s late on a Saturday night and Metalhead is at some kid’s basement party. The kid got the new Slayer album that afternoon and has it blaring because his parents are not home. Rockgod holds both hands up in the air like he is prey for bandits, but the rest of his body convulses, his head shaking back and forth, up and down and windmilling along with the drum beat. Metalhead laughs and then there is a body careening into him, pushing him into another kid who is jumping and shimmying against the wall because heavy metal is the stuff that binds kids together, the fray that keeps their blood inside them. When Metalhead’s sister has her friends over, they dance in the living room to Madonna or Culture Club while his father complains that the music is too loud. Metalhead can feel the guitar in his teeth, can feel the speakers’ rumble deep in his chest.

With thumb and forefinger I examined carefully the ball peen hammer. The sparrow slid violently into third base. Night after night it was Nascar, kettle…

The morning of Claire's funeral, I lie naked on the table and wait for her mourners to arrive. Thomas scrapes a knife against whetstone in the kitchen. When he appears above me, the blade glints harsh in his hand. It's all I can see. To minimize the pain, he explains with a paternal smile. I smile too.

Is it really warranted, for you to bring a gun to New York, city of high achievement? Thoughtless we both stood, me, trying to talk you down from taking an overdose of cerulean powder, you, intent on ingesting a headlamp so you could witness the inner beatings of your gut.

$138,000 into the story, there is nowhere else to go. I spent my twenty-seventh year typing letters of application, the nerves in each hand wrecked by…

156,000 into the story, the room is empty.   The man I have started dating listens to my stories of how the dinners at the American Academy would unfold,…