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Fat Cats, Happiness and Laptop Love -- What I Learned From Magazines This Week

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The Utah State Attorney General's office recently stated in a court filing that there is no constitutional right to marry a laptop.(Time, 6/19/17)Smartphones are spreading head lice.(New York, 7/10/17)People are less helpful when it's hot.(Time, 7/24/17)Online virtual…

Crumpled

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We wanted so much to find ourselves in a beautiful world. It was, and is, but every inviting leaf has got another hidden dangerous precedent that must be surrendered to in order to survive to see another sunset with the ones you actually…

Be Afraid

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Everything conspires to kill you:

Koo, The Queen of Nowhere

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Koo ate the sad, bitter pills just so she wouldn’t have to try and make small talk about La Donna’s deformed, retarded kid.

Rue Saint Maur, 3:14am

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The city had a way of going silent. Not a nervous silence, but a quiet silence. The sky was dark, yet everything was colored in a yellow hue cast by the arched streetlights. Buildings, parked vehicles, walls, pavement. Cars and scooters and ambulances and police cars…

Museum Story Listening

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A sort of invocation of the open sky, in contradistinction to the dark of the Earth whence came the specimens, a figurative marriage of the literal darkness of exploration and the figurative light of knowledge.

The One-Dollar Minister

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The man could be a total brute, though the truth was he had the softest of hearts too. A real gentle giant. But get him going on a drunk jag with too much ouzo in his system, and look out.

Lime Grove in the Snow

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Up ahead I saw clusters of people standing silently under the trees. They seemed to be just waiting there. More than 100 people lined up in the cold and dark, not moving.

Salzburg

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One night while in rehab I had a dream that I worked as a violin maker in Salzburg.

Here Comes the Sun/ There Goes the Moon

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still have the yellow rose that I did not throw into the grave.

Dachau July 2010 The Sixty-fifth Anniversary of the Liberation

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Bubbling from the hairline cracks in the glossy pavement of the new Einkaufszentrum in the town of Dachau oozes a mysterious thick red substance. Not blood, the mayor insists despite chemical analyses. And keep it quiet. Just…

henry

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her skin was delicate, fragile, that old woman skin that appears to be translucent.the rip caused by the knife opened it up like tissue paper. blood welled for a moment, then poured out with real purpose.this was the delight he found in old ladies.. the scent of their…

The Story

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He pronounced the Afrikaans word with the vowel sound like the vowel in dour. It meant box, but it also meant cunt.

Spring in November

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It is dead, for a time. Sometimes we are all dead for a time. Our lives leave off, sleep under the weight of snow.

The Ringlet

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Most of Carl’s neighbors considered him a lone taciturn man at best and an eccentric loony at worst. His neighbors knew him as the guy who left his house every morning at eight dressed in a suit and tie.

No Place Like Home for the Holidays

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Lu loved his mother, but her anxieties nagged at him like poison ivy. You can't avoid scratching it, but the more you do, the worse it gets.

The $64,000 Question

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One day over a hardscrabble dinner of gristly beef and lumpy mashed potatoes, his uncle looked up at him and said, “Kee-rist, boy, school’s gonna start any day now. And winter ain’t far behind. I can’t keep you here. We gotta figure out something for you.

To The Little Mouse Who Started Feeling Slightly Nauseous

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I heard them praying to some god none of us had ever heard of. I'm glad I went to the funeral and still have the yellow rose that I did not throw into his grave. At some point you have to stop nibbling from the moldy cake.

Du Fu's spring scene

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state a shambles, mountains and rivers endure./meanwhile, the city hides amidst spring's thick growth . . .

Jack

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We’ve already agreed on a date when Jack posts some new pictures of himself. I have to swallow. Hard. In four days Jack’s become twenty years older! On Thursday, a boyish thirty-something was smiling at me from my PC. This Monday I find myself stari

The Legend of Knifemouth’s Legendary Mouth Grows

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In the small towns of central and southern Illinois there lives a very indecent sort of man.

CARTOGRAPHY

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Your brother is not really blind.

Waves

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“still watersrun deep” is not my portionborn to make waves Formed from the ocean

Tracks

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When dogs run free

The Violent Kind

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But my point is, this isn’t a Thomas Kinkade. It’s not like you can pay me fifty dollars and I can drive to the Twombly store and buy another Twombly.

Rule of exchange

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She seizes my hand. I resist just enough to sense her strength.

Questions of the Tenth Month

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my loosening grip on time.

He's Sarcastic

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I got kicked out of a soup and salad place last week for trying to buy a large soda so I could sit and eat my sack lunch there while I read “Love’s Desperate Creatures” by Dorothy Danville. Have you read it? Its great. I’ll give it to you when I’m done

In the Chambers of the End

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Tiny skiers look like beetles/on a white bedspread. /We watch them fall to earth from/the high peaks and tell ourselves this is the week that sealed it

The Arctic Express

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Sky: Snows, turns dark. Street: Freezes. Remains on a hill. Traffic: None on this block. Two: Did I miss the bus? One: You either missed it, or it didn't come. Two: Hasn't come. One: One or the other. Which one? Two: I don't know; I asked you. One: I meant which…