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Tweet I. Two Dvaid stands staring at himself in the scuffed chrome of elevator doors. Craggy cheekbones strain at sallow skin, broken bristles of straw blonde hair hang in his eyes. Ratty, sleep-worn clothes are wrinkled and stiff: a far cry from the bolo-tied Eagle Scout David used to be. He flexes fists around a . . . → Read More: [sic] Tweet Phil, the foreman, starts his truck and it coughs with the exhausted guttural roar of a lifelong smoker. Wheels waist high spray gravel back into aluminum siding, into my face. Noontime traffic in this part of town, I’ve got fifteen minutes before he returns. Black-smeared, paint-spattered arms will cradle foot-long grinders and Gatorade for . . . → Read More: Pinioned Tweet 1. The Father The burial isn’t the first time the father has seen his son, but it may as well be. Nine months after delivery, he told his son’s mother he’d never wanted children. He stood with the woman on the sunlit front porch of their townhouse. “I’m sorry,” he said. “All babies look . . . → Read More: The Kind of Man Who Tweet Angie’s seen him adjust himself two times today; he doesn’t want to risk a third. Of all people, she would file a complaint. Garrett takes little steps, scampers into the furthest aisle between 1990 and the brick wall. There, he reaches down to fix himself again. He pinches the bottom edge of the fabric . . . → Read More: Contretemps Tweet The color of your eyes is a complete surprise to me. I’ve never considered it. You’re sitting across from me and you’re brooding, bellicose. I have no right to be shocked, but your attitude is not the one I expected. When I spoke to you Tuesday you insisted, even sounded enthusiastic. But settling on . . . → Read More: Here Is My Only Elsewhere Tweet Remy Mallory’s father has been dead four years by the time Remy starts noticing him everywhere: the supermarket, the Laundromat, the Seven-Eleven. Remy sees a convincing permutation of his father in nearly every man past fifty; he recognizes them. Dad has become a businessman. That’s dad and he’s retired. R.L. Mallory was a wreck . . . → Read More: Hibakusha Tweet Two Across is ‘love’ and he tells her so and she fills it in. He waits for her reaction; there is no reaction. The clue was ‘amorous sentiment’ and he solved it easily because he sits at the counter with her and the shampoo in her shower damp hair is redolent. “One Down is . . . → Read More: Holophrastic Tweet At the end of their seventy-fourth summer—forty-nine spent together, nearly fifty—they were the quintessence of age: failing machines, bad meat. Their minds had not gone, had been honed; time a lapidary polishing insight and acumen until the intellect was a self-illuminating diamond. Their bodies had not followed suit. The meat, cocooning that consciousness, had . . . → Read More: The Plot Tweet It could have been happening for days by the time he noticed. Happening for days before anyone like him, anyone in his situation, would ever have noticed. By his mid-twenties he wasn’t fooling anyone with a comb-over, a comb-forward. His wife told him so. He bought an old electric razor at a yard sale, . . . → Read More: Malady Tweet 1. I fold my knees up to my chest and turn onto my side, sort of half fall onto the carpet before I can think about how dirty it is, how long it’s been since it was vacuumed. When this occurs to me, I upright myself, take an antiseptic towelette from the box by . . . → Read More: Of My Own Free Will |
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