Dispatches from Afar

Dispatch from Atarantes: there is indeed desert here, but of the people there is no sign. It is said that they are people who live with no names, who eat no meat, who have no dreams. Here in the endless sand, we could see why.

Dear Mike

She tells him that her head has fallen off. She tells him that the nurses squeeze her arms too tightly and the blood-pressure sleeve makes her cry. He says, "I'm sorry, Izzy, that doesn't make any sense to me."

Some Scars Never Go Away

What a noisy and confused phone conversation we had yesterday! Blame my cell phone for garbling your words. The service in my area is unreliable, unlike yours in America.

Confessions

Father, I'm afraid of: Long nights like this. I’m afraid of pain, but not death. I’m afraid of sadness and the sense of abandonment. I'm afraid of dogs, because they don't understand me, and I don’t understand them.

Found

A slip of paper telling me I will surely die. I find one, then many, everywhere: on church benches, bus stop platforms, at the supermarket customer service window. They are written in a hand I don’t recognize.

One Day You’ll Need This

I have taken you to Taiwan many times and hope we can go again before too long. But there will come a day when you decide to return on your own, when you aren’t just tagging along but are propelled by some inner motivation or curiosity to learn about your heritage and your ancestors.

Esteemed Patrons and Fine Folks

Dear Esteemed Patrons: Please do not flush feminine products in the toilets. There are trash receptacles for this purpose. —The Fine Folks at Florentine Trattoria

Do Werewolves Live in the Pacific Northwest?

r/UnresolvedMysteries: My dad and I moved to Riverbend, a small town thirty minutes east of Seattle, Washington, five months ago. I supposedly lived here when I was a baby, but I don’t recall anything about here. Redding and Riverbend are similar, but Riverbend is colder. A lot colder.

Letter to Bucharest Concerning the Use of Blue in Paintings and Music

Dear Bucharest, I keep dreaming the stench of summer light crawling over the outdoor market, the warmed botany of rotting flowers and bouquets of diesel fumes like an extended belch from your hidden stomach.

Rain King

I woke to the sounds of rain on the shake roof, and a mingling of songs from August and Everything After repeating in my mind. It was beyond me why that album, and why now, but you know your crazy brother. Anyway, it made me think of you:

The Sunset Witch

A witch comes at sunset to take children away, my mother tells me. She stopped reading to me before I could remember, but this one she tells without needing a book.

The Hare Moon

“The women in our family never die.” Your grandmother tells you this. The moon is still up when she wakes you and by it, you see her hold one crooked finger to her lips.

Ghost Phone

42.348495, -83.060303; 1974: ...bellwethers or canaries, I don’t know which. It’s what they call a blue note in jazz, intentionally off-pitch. A signal searching for a receiver. Damn, can’t getta tone...

The Widower’s Wife Takes Him to This Year’s Death Gala

“Should I go as drowned?” she says, stroking her blue skin. “Or strangled?” A necklace of bruises purples her throat. “Shot?” she says, as bullet wounds blossom on her limbs. “Or,” and her forehead sprouts a crown of broken glass, “Car crash?”

This Wave, a Little One (Quietly)

There’s a lake that is a locket, a love machine without the machine. Hey that’s me right? you said, pointing to the lapping waves, remembering something I’d said, laughing (sort of).

Among the Stars

My granddaughter, Ray, is obsessed with constellations. She can find them all, even the obscure, complicated ones like Berenice's hair and the keel of the Argonauts’ ship.

Love Songs for Ghosts

The torch singer at the end of the world has found a working cassette player. It is nestled amongst other dust-covered treasures in a Chinatown rummage shop.

Mothers-in-Law

The Divorcee zone of the marriage market was always the sparsest, but Li went everyday all the same. Tucked under her arm were a tape roll and extra copies of the notice for her son…

Storytime?

There are so many details in this print that one could get lost staring at it. And I have. But I want to help you avoid getting taken in and distracted by the picture’s surface level dramas. Allow me to point out where the real drama exists.

This is Our City

I materialize in bed. I glimmer and stand out. My blinkers are on and my heart is warm. He is my phantom limb. I become his tiny little curled up set of legs when we mate.

May You / Live In / Interesting Times

Will sits and sketches a robot onto loose-leaf on his bottom bunk before dinner. Dinner is PB&J if there’s still some left from lunch. PB & syrup if not. Half a sleeve of saltines with that, and maybe a cup of watered-down cherry Flavor Aid.

The Days Last Longer the Further Away You Are

On Mars, there is no one left, but we still think they can hear us. The delay lets us live in moments where everything is alright. It’s only when we get no response and get no response and continue to get no response that we begin to understand.

Bonus Scene from Year of the Buffalo

Scott walked into his boss’s office. Stood for a beat, waiting for Ed to ask what he needed while Ed stared at his computer, waiting for Scott to start.

“I think I need a new chair,” Scott said.

I Have to Leave So That I Can Return

I am always leaving, and I want them to be prepared. Before summer suddenly turns into Fall, before all the leaves have hit the ground, I make sure I have somewhere else to go. I have to leave so that I can return, so that I can make it through the bitter cold months of winter.

Farm Reports

My grandparents have a family farm outside of Wichita. I help shuck corn and find worms wriggling in the freshly-picked ears when I pull their silk blanket off. There are warm snakes under freshly-laid eggs, curing around their oval prizes.

Soon You’ll Be Just Like Us

Wednesday, November nineteenth, the morning I’m scheduled to see my new face. Alice comes to my room, and for the first time, leaves the door unlocked—in fact, wide open.

Two Knocks

Teddy stayed home from school that day, even though her mother had to go to the office. Teddy didn’t feel like going to school, and she said, again and again, I’m sick. I don’t feel well. This was something Teddy had discovered, that repetition could sway parents. This was the new power she had.

Internet Review from a Vampire

Vescelaus slammed the book shut. He’d never been so disgusted in all his life—which was saying something. Vescelaus was immortal.

The Parlor

There’s a police car parked in the street outside Belinda’s house. Belinda can see it from the sagging living room couch where she has just finished her after-school snack–peanut butter and raspberry jam on toast, again.

Vocabulary Lesson

It’s too late to back out now. Already her son sits at the kitchen counter, legs swinging from the barstool, waiting for her. His index cards, all the words his teacher has assigned for this week’s vocabulary quiz, sprawl in front of him like a dissected dictionary.

Saturn Devouring His Son, McCulloch County, Texas, 1982

He watched his father for direction, advice. He tried to bring the rifle up to his shoulder as slowly, as his father did. He struggled but did not want to disappoint.

Nur Jahan Bent over Backwards in Time

When a fourteen-year-old girl, in a haphazard way, writes the names of nineteen wives of Jehangir, a Mughal emperor of India in the sixteenth century, on the mud floor of her cottage with a wooden stick.

Excerpt from Taoism

“Let reality be reality.”* 

In period 3 World Religions Father Riley orders you to stand. He asks if you’ve misplaced your hairbrush. He says you look like a horse. Everyone laughs.

Arrivals

She lands at the airport, the wheels juddering beneath the plane’s frame, her hands pressed to the seat back in front.

Back Here in My Dream, Over and Over Again

Memory tells me where to go, even though my mind tells me it’s my first time here. The familiar concrete steps, the choppy sidewalk, the clear ocean teeming with octopus.

Cherry Creek Reservoir

As if the virus weren’t enough, the middle-aged couple was informed upon arriving at the Cherry Creek Reservoir during their trip to Denver that blue-green algae was present, and swimming would not be allowed.

Assassination

Here’s a fun fact. The Chinese believe the eyeballs of fish to be delicacies, and to be offered one when there are only two! in the whole fish! is considered a great honor.

Excerpt from Cheat

Julio and his mother had spent much of his childhood watching shows that, in hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have been watching. Blind Date and Jerry Springer. Cops. Cheaters.

Nature Sightings Outside My Window

These sightings always start the same. / A little bird chases a big bird / Away from her nest, from her children, / From her husband while he sleeps? / Do birds have husbands? Maybe.

Turtle

Our task is to find food in our nature. My older brother and I are assigned to the same tent—because of my secret. I collect berries, but my brother wants meat.

Excerpt from The Governor

It’s a Monday afternoon, and one of my lovers is telling me that he doesn’t find me as sexy as he used to.

You Always Ask Me How I Write

“Do you write at home?” you ask. “Or outside?”

“Alone,” I answer. “I can’t write with people around me. Especially people I know. It feels like they can hear my thoughts.”

Excerpt from Water as Villain Origin Story

Would you believe they blamed the river? For its honesty, the way it forages for anything’s likeness. Snips each season’s foliage from the trees, suspends the leaves in its wet resin.

The Dog Walker

clips a schnauzer to each leash: the hard puller on the right, the fighter on the left. They start their walk slowly, but the fighter, the smaller one, immediately lunges at his own reflection in the window at Duane Reade.

Excerpt from How High We Go in the Dark

It’s strange how a graveyard the size of a planet could instill hope in us all, help us to understand that our ship was more than a ship and whatever we found would be home not only because of oxygen and water and soil chemistry, but because of us.

Resume (Draft)

Objective: To secure a challenging and rewarding position in management of sinners’ souls.

Moon And Mantle

Silt slit—so along the crevice, detritus and echoed lullabies entered and emerged upon river mouths as such tongues lingered among melodic motions up against eroded banks of stalagmitic earth.

Within Easy Reach of the Rocky Mountains

She can’t help but think of you—imagining the tone of your voice, the shape of your mouth when you say her name.