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Type A

Lynn Ahrens — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dominic’s breath is soft in my ear, his accent a lilting roller coaster. He guides my hand, telling me exactly what he wants me to do. I’m moist with sweat, exhausted, but he’s patient, knowing it’s my first time. We’ve been at it for hours—his voice is coming from a million miles away.

“Now, please type in C as in California, O as in Oregon, N as in New York, and F as in Fronk-en-shty-een.”

“Excuse me?”

“F as in Fronk-en-shty-een.”

“Frankenstein?”

“That is correct.”

I do as he says. A pause.

“Yes! Yes! Yes!” I’m shrieking in ecstasy.

Darling Dominic, or whatever your real name is, in Calcutta or New Delhi—thank you, thank you, my sweet love. After five grueling hours with you, I’m back online.

Dog Heaven

Tom Grimes — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

When Richard heard the doorbell ring, he flipped on the light above the entryway and saw a young woman standing on his front step. Earlier in the day there had been a heavy rain in town, before the temperature dropped below freezing. It was dark now, and Richard thought the girl might need help. He opened the door, and she said hi, and he said hi back, and then she pointed to the end of the driveway.

“Is he yours?”

Richard looked out and saw a dog sitting on its hind legs in the middle of the wet street. “No,” he said.

“Well, he’s just kind of like not moving or anything.”

“Huh,” Richard said. His wife, Lily, came up behind him and asked what was happening. “There’s a dog sitting in the street,” he said.

“I didn’t want to just leave him there,” the girl said.

“No, of course not,” Richard said, knowing that cars and pickup trucks raced up the blind hill.

“He’s soaking wet,” Lily said when the three of them reached the dog, which looked up but didn’t move. Lily knelt down and petted him.

Richard eyed the girl without being able to discern her features clearly. He said, “Did you ask any of the neighbors if it belonged to them?”

“You’re the only one who answered,” she told him.

Shanghai, China

Lucille Bellucci — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

After Father Murphy’s first year at St. Columban’s in Shanghai, my sister Maria and I began calling him the Murph behind his back. Malachy Murphy was a large, freckled redhead from County Mayo who told us his family was so big that whenever they had chicken for dinner, he only got the neck. He never did get a workable grip on the Shanghai dialect or on any other Chinese language, but it was his gutsy laugh and courage I remember more than his poor Chinese.

Peace

Richard Bausch — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

(Fiction; Knopf, 2008)

Peace is set during the winter of 1944 in the Italian countryside, devastated and awash with unrelenting rain and rumors of German retreat. We follow three American soldiers on a reconnaissance mission: Corporal Robert Marson, a man of faith older than his charges; Joyner, a high-strung bigot with a sailor’s mouth; and Asch, a skeptical Jew, baby faced and untested. All are witnesses, haunted by the murder of a prostitute at the hands of their sergeant.

At the Gentle Mercy of Plants

Hildegarde Flanner — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:44:07 -0800

(Nonfiction; John Daniel Publications, 1986)

I discovered Hildegarde Flanner’s book of essays and poems, At the Gentle Mercy of Plants, almost by accident, tucked as it was on a tightly packed shelf in an unpretentious used book store in St. Helena, California. I’d never heard of the author, but the title, with its subtle admonition, seduced me. I opened the little volume and read a paragraph, then the publisher’s note. I became aware that I was browsing a book store on Flanner’s soil, in one of her towns, in her state:

I have spent much of my life looking at plants. And recently it seems that plants, with sympathy, are looking at me. I wish I could get them to look the other way. It has all to do with the memories, memories of the time when southern California was different, or the world was different, and so was I.

First Words: The Best and Worst of Inaugural Speeches

Debra Hughes — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:02:45 -0800

Choice words and measured phrases can set a presidency in motion. When America’s forty-fourth president takes office, his inaugural address will circle the globe. Barack Obama’s speech will be recorded, posted on YouTube, and broadcast worldwide in all forms of media. The best of his words will be remembered; his less fortunate words or phrases may be quoted later as well.

Kennedy had his soaring eloquence. Lincoln, his inspirational message. Franklin Roosevelt delivered no-nonsense, and Reagan had his soothing, telegenic talk. The inaugural first words: they foreshadow the character of leadership to come.

Temptations

Tina Netteshiem — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:45:02 -0800

In a Beattie story there are voices inside voices, and a man with earplugs to warn us of the dangers of tuning out. We listen to a liar with delusions of grandeur and to a analyzer of novels with a paper badge, because we’re in a story where the characters themselves want to know what happened, where each knows a version and a piece. We collect and weigh details deliberately invoked but seemingly random, and we know what we know because someone filled someone in. Beattie writes about deceiving ourselves and each other. We scan the dial, listening to gossips for the truth.

“The Rock” is crowded with split-second histories, so compressed that each could be the whole thing. It’s tempting to believe it when somebody says, “The story is pretty much this.” Smile at that, but don’t believe it. The story churns and brightens, characters deepen and go flat. Just when it can’t get any more complex, there’s a turn, more trouble, more fun—because chaos looks like life. Beattie knows we approach her work with a highlighter. She drags us in and before we know it, the entire story is yellow.

—Tina Netteshiem

Harvest

Steven Rydman — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:06:40 -0800

Dear Mom,

Quando uscirete dalla chiesa? That’s Italian for, When will you come out of the church? Don’t get too excited, I haven’t found God. I did meet an American guy with a huge mill house outside Genoa. It’s, like, five hundred years old. He’s letting me crash, just have to help his gardener. I pick up phrases as we trim sunflowers. The gardener and his wife go to church every week. They keep trying to take me. She says I would smile more if I prayed. Reminds me of you. Don’t miss home much, but do think of everyone and know you’re all worrying about me. Don’t, these people are great, especially the American guy. We talk and drink lots of wine at night. He lent me a copy of W. Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. You might like it.

More later,

Billy

Mom,

I’m not coming home early, so stop asking. Lasciarlo solo! Leave me alone!

Two Poems

Jane Miller — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:15:26 -0800

4

Do you know how long it has been since a moral

choice presented itself

and the wrong choice was made
not two minutes
why is it not quiet between lightning and thunder

as if someone were asking

do you have other articulable feelings if so express

them now

Sambo, or: The Last of the Gibson Girls

Rita Dove — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:49:58 -0800

You don’t want that one.

Yes I do, please . . .

Look at it!

Why can’t I—

Just look. What color is it?

Black.

And the mouth?

Red.

And?

Big.

What else?

He’s smiling—

Grinning. What else?

Pretty eyes . . .

Pop eyes, chile, those are pop eyes. Don’t you know who that is?

Just a doll, a funny doll, can’t I have it? . . .

Chile, don’t you recognize an insult when you see one? That’s supposed to be you.

On the bus she eased the new purse out of its wrappings and studied it carefully. It was black and shiny; she could almost see herself in its flat face. She unsnapped the clasp and peeked inside. A little mirror came with the purse; it dangled from a golden chain.

Skin brown. Hair black. Eyes small and far apart. Unsmiling. I don’t look like that—why she say I do? No one said any of those other dolls looked like anybody.

Waiting

Stephen Kuusisto — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:45:35 -0800

Is part of something: a blue door opens,

Portuguese fishermen walk from a coffee shop

In Providence, Rhode Island—or Lisbon—
And head for the pier with buckets.

Part of something, they ride the sea:
The Atlantic, part of something.

My Thanksgiving Procedure

J. C. Duffy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 06:58:53 -0800

My name is Underdog. You may remember I had a Saturday morning cartoon show back in the ’60s. I was big. I was physically small, especially on the TV sets of the time, but I was big in Show Biz terms. Now I’m physically large, but I’m basically a Show Biz has-been. Back then, there were Underdog comic books, Underdog lunch boxes, Underdog watches, you name it.

Eventually, however, the show got canceled. I was devastated. My girlfriend, Sweet Polly Purebred, dumped me and started dating George of the Jungle. I began hitting the bottle pretty hard, and I wallowed in self-pity for over a year.

The Crime of the Brigadier

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:11:14 -0800

In all the great hosts of France there was only one officer towards whom the English of Wellington’s Army retained a deep, steady, and unchangeable hatred. There were plunderers among the French, and men of violence, gamblers, duellists, and roués. All these could be forgiven, for others of their kidney were to be found among the ranks of the English. But one officer of Massena’s force had committed a crime which was unspeakable, unheard of, abominable; only to be alluded to with curses late in the evening, when a second bottle had loosened the tongues of men.The news of it was carried back to England, and country gentlemen who knew little of the details of the war grew crimson with passion when they heard of it, and yeomen of the shires raised freckled fists to Heaven and swore. And yet who should be the doer of this dreadful deed but our friend the Brigadier, Etienne Gerard, of the Hussars of Conflans, gay-riding, plume-tossing, debonnaire, the darling of the ladies and of the six brigades of light cavalry.

The Rembrandt

Edith Wharton — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:09:05 -0800

“You’re so artistic,” my cousin Eleanor Copt began.

Of all Eleanor’s exordiums it is the one I most dread. When she tells me I’m so clever I know this is merely the preamble to inviting me to meet the last literary obscurity of the moment: trial to be evaded or endured, as circumstances dictate: whereas her calling me artistic fatally connotes the request to visit, in her company, some distressed gentlewoman whose future hangs on my valuation of her old Saxe or of her grandfather’s Marc Antonios. Time was when I attempted to resist these compulsions of Eleanor’s; but I soon learned that, short of actual flight, there was no refuge from her beneficent despotism.

Outside Elko

Porter Fox — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:56:34 -0800

The two men sat across from each other. A pair of car keys rested on the table between them. One of the men held a glass mug, the other his head in his hands. A waitress stood by, waiting for their order. She coughed and scuffed her sneaker across the floor.

Get to it, Bill finally said.

What?

Order something.

Order for me.

I don’t know what you want.

Neither do I.

Bill looked at the waitress, tapped his mug. Two Buds.

Draft or bottles? she asked.

Either.

Which?

Bottles.

Bill watched her walk away. He whistled and winked at Ted. Then he went to the jukebox and punched in three songs.

How bad was it? he asked when he sat down.

Bad, said Ted.

What’d he do?

Nothing. Yet.

He hit you?

The Structure of Bubbles

Emily Raboteau — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:15:20 -0800

After a lifetime of smoking Virginia Slims, my grandmother was dying of lung cancer in the oncology ward of Milwaukee’s Aurora Sinai. It was the Fourth of July. My Aunt Patty and I were sitting in the hospital cafeteria sharing a lukewarm plate of Salisbury steak and waxed green beans.

We were supposed to contact the priest to deliver last rites as soon as we finished eating dinner. I can’t say I loved Grammy Livy, but I can say I felt sad. I drank a little carton of milk as if I were in elementary school, and my aunt drank a little airline bottle of Maker’s Mark whiskey as if it were normal.

“Don’t tell your mother,” Aunt Patty winked, blotting her lipstick with a paper napkin. I noticed that her hands were trembling. Of the two of them, my mother was the more accomplished at handling death, having already buried my older brother. And as everyone knows, losing a parent is a piece of cake compared to losing a child. Right then, my mother was upstairs on the fourth floor, attending my grandmother. That’s just who my mother was—a caretaker.

Starting Over

Nate Haken — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:51:02 -0800

“You want crazy? I’ll tell you crazy.” Rudagi selected a burning stick and shook it up and down, tracing lines into the blackness of my retina. He smacked it against the ground, throwing sparks across the sky, smothering the flame. Then he brought the glowing end to his face and lit a cigarette. For a moment I saw his grinning face, lined and magnified in the dark. “I’ll tell you crazy,” he said again, exhaling smoke, gesturing with his cigarette hand. I cracked open another beer.

The three of us were spending the summer at Emil’s grandfather’s cabin on the Puget Sound. We spent the days hunting and fishing and digging up clams. At night we sat around a fire, drank beer, and taunted one another. This night the moon was particularly bright. Emil was strumming a guitar. “Don’t want to start over. Don’t want to begin again,” he crooned.

“Tell me crazy,” I said to Rudagi. He took a deep breath and plunged into another anecdote from the Iran-Iraq War. Sometimes that’s all he could talk about. I didn’t mind. He was a hell of a good storyteller.

Lou and Liz

George Gissing — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:10:05 -0800

The Great Bell at Westminster was striking nine.

Sunlight streamed into the garret window, bathing a robust, comely girl, who stood half-dressed before a looking-glass and combed out her tawny hair. In bed lay another girl, seemingly asleep, and on the pillow beside her perched a baby boy of eighteen months, munching at a biscuit.

‘Now then, Liz!’ cried the girl who was dressing, as she took a hairpin from between her lips. ‘Goin’ to loy there all d’y? Wike up, do!’ She began to sing in a strident voice, ‘ “J’yful, j’yful will that meetin’ be,—when from sin our ’arts are pure and free.” Jacky, give mummy one on the ’ead. Liz, git up! ’Ow d’yer suppose we’re goin’ to git to London Bridge by eleven?’ Again she sang: ‘ “You can ’ear ’em soigh, an’ wish to doy, an’ see them wink the other eye,—at the man that browk the benk at Monty Car—lo!” Say, Liz, did you ’ear Mr Tunks come ’ome last night? Same old capers; fallin’ down all the time he was goin’ up—Wike up, I tell yer!’

Cartoon Art Volume 1

Various Artists — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:57:45 -0800

Heaven Is Full of Windows

Steve Stern — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:41:35 -0800

Had Gussie Panken looked up from her machine, a movement that could get her salary docked a dollar, she would have seen what the lazy Sadie Kupla saw in the window overlooking Washington Place. The late March breeze was causing the orange curtains to billow, the serrated orange curtains, though the open windows along Washington Place had never had any curtains. Then the wisps of orange turned into waves, a rumbling swell that poured over the sills into the shop, engulfing the bins of scraps, torching the bales of unfinished waists heaped atop the oil-soaked tables. By the time Gussie had turned to see what Sadie was screeching about—her shrieks echoed in a chorus all up and down the long rows of worktables—the fire was advancing like a mob of ragged hooligans.