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Return to Hue, Vietnam
The heat veil descends the third week of July and the market vendors feel its suffocation. Next to the stall of spices, a woman holds a cleaver, perched just an arm’s length from the spiked jackfruit shell. She brings it down with the force of one hacking through bones. Squatting on sidewalk corners, the gossipmongers…
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My Viking
My Viking stood at six-foot-eight, barrel-chested and ginger haired. His breath always tasted of dark rich beer and his moustache tickled my lips. Sometimes when I was doing the crossword or watching people through my window he would come up behind me, sling me up across his shoulders and carry me off as his booty.…
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Poems
Mack’s Conversion Skimming back and forth across the Holy Land, Elijah felt the need to set down his chariot and he did so upon the banks of the Jordan. He came to a small tavern near to that spot wherein a great man of Laodicea was holding forth. The two mocked each other to their…
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Dogmael
I can’t say I’m anything to be anyone to be saying a thing about it, but I’s heard it enough, I have, as much as any. But it was, gah, it was over yonder ways near Bristhlewaight or Skinnamarok or what’s-the-town. What’s that town, Geoff, north the forest up there yonder? Place where they strung…
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Two Short Pieces About Love
I. The old man and the old woman have been married for many years. Scattered around their small house are indications of the time that has passed; a doll the husband brought back from Japan, in a paper-thin kimono that would crumble to dust if touched; a wall that still bears traces of the crayon…
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Desperately Seeking Franny
The first two times I read Franny and Zooey, I was going through, to borrow a phrase from Salinger, a “blue period.” I have come to identify these low times with the term “melancholy,” a gloomy Victorian adjective that has taken on the power of a noun in my vocabulary. I have started countless sentences…
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Bones
“I saved a man’s life today.” She’s asleep. I climb into bed. My mouth hovers hot over her ear. “I saved a man’s life today.” That does it. She rolls over and has this medusa look. Quickly, I drop and pretend to be asleep before her eyes focus, but I’m not under the covers. “Fuck…
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The Reappearance of Simple Words
La Rambla of Barcelona is like a mile-long circus. Thousands of people speaking 20 different languages come and go on the promenade at all hours of the day, stopping to admire street performers dressed as mermaids, Roman statues, and harlequins who smile and blow kisses in exchange for 20 cents. One man, painted and dressed…
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All the Pretty Corpses
Cormac McCarthy has established himself as one of the great American authors of the 20th century. His magnificent Border Trilogy, comprised of All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities on the Plain, told the hardscrabble yet ethereal tale of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham as they roamed an exilic landscape of death, love,…
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Dr. Webster’s Case File on Minna Ipsen
She had no plans to grow old, and she had no desire to feel her hips hurt (1). Minna was sitting by her grandmother’s bedside in Munroe Hospital when the woman called out in pain. Even though it has been nine years since her grandmother’s death, at night when Minna tries to fall asleep those…
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