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The Last Language

I think you might have turned into a novelist, if we’d been allowed to go on.

The Letters

The letter both pleased and disturbed her. Why did he get in touch?

The Little Weaver of Duleek Gate

It was up airly and down late with him, and the loom never standin’ still.

The Lusitania

A coldness bumped a last kiss upon my cheek, a good-bye kiss sliding across.

The Making of a Writer

The Making of a Writer

Write simple sentences. Report. Don’t moralize. No pretensions.

The Man and the Snake

The eyes looked into his own with a meaning, a malign significance.

The Mines at Potosí, Bolivia

He handed us sticks of dynamite, rolled in wax paper like taffy.

The Monolith

Jane’s made it clear, this Renuka might not even become a doctor.

The Musician

She accused her husband with great drama of having destroyed her life.

The News from Hell

The stupider the president the more power you arrange for him.

The Nightcrawler

He only told the world what the world wanted to hear from a guy who graduated from Harvard.

The Oil Sheikh

Six other guests smoked Marlboro Lights, and ashtrays filled up.

The Orangutan

Sneaking was one thing, entering a bar with a someone else’s ID another.

The Painted Veil

Kitty reached the age of twenty-five and was still unmarried.

The Palace of Illusions

I managed to talk sensible Alice into a little pink outfit and high heels.

The Photographs of Your Life

I saw it on her face that day, a look like her heart would drift into the sky.

The Plan of an English Dictionary

I look on Britain as a new world, which it is almost madness to invade.

The Poetic Establishment Has Co-opted Contradiction

Are these poems just cumbersome or a critique of cumbersomeness?

The Practice

I lost myself in their minds: for the moment I actually became them.

The Psychic’s House

Meghan Dunn

The Rage of the Squat King

What would make a sane person want to watch such blood sport?

The Rembrandt

One felt all the poor lady’s barriers were falling save her manner.

The Romance of Elsewhere

If you want to know what to write, ask yourself what obsesses you.

The Royal Reykjavík Sex Tour

We were in a play about affection. We were in a play about sex.

The Salaryman

It almost makes you cry, to know that you are no longer needed.

The Saturday Morning Institute of Human Survival

The first time the world demanded more of me, I was twenty-nine.

The Second-Worst Rug My Father’s Ever Seen

I hear myself giving advice in my father’s voice: Take the emotion out.

The Sentimentality of William Tavener

It takes a strong woman to make any sort of success in the West.

The Servants’ Quarters

Ma didn’t believe in slapping. It was what common people did.