for (the late) Sir James George Frazer I Sisyphus He gripped a corner of the sky and peeled it off the walls of the world to go where no man has gone before. Behind the sky was the same sky, same dry/wet, blue/gray variations, the mesmerizing metamorphics of clouds. Being and nothingness as always being…

Kanae hangs up her cell phone. She only wanted to hear Alec’s voice. Just to be sure. She drops the phone on the seat next to her, repositions the car in her own lane and ignores an angry honk from an oncoming driver. What matters is the speed of her car and its position in…

How I started going to meetings is something I never told you, because it happened a few years ago to a person who is less me, less the person I am now, this person who until recently you had strong feelings for. Those are your words: Strong feelings. Now I have decided that I want…

Rurik is teaching me to juggle with a red scarf throw, a blue scarf throw, and his Russian accent, catch catch. He says go with impact as the scarves flutter to his hands and his arms sink as if he’s catching lead balls. Or missiles. Throw throw catch catch. The boss rushes in, copper-shiny heels,…

On the birth of my first grandchild The baby was born early. Eight weeks early to be exact. They now count gestation in weeks not months. I stood in the hall and heard his first cry. Like a kitten, small and mewing. He was small. Four pounds, three ounces. For six weeks the baby will…

Mary pokes a hole in her yolk and watches the thick yellow ooze across the white membrane towards her glistening butter toast. She always cooks her eggs over-easy because, despite the name, those are the most difficult to make. Light taps to crack the shell. A slick slide into the skillet. And then the tricky…

the wolves The grey goes white sometimes or it is white going grey. I don’t know, I can’t tell. But their paws are what I like to watch, pawing in the ground. I wish I could stop one and lift its foot, these wolves. I wish I could squeeze, feel those big pads they have…

When I was very young, my mother told me that she didn’t believe in fairy tales. They were, she liked to say, lessons dressed in fancy clothes. She preferred to excise the princesses and villains and instead concerned herself with the moral of the story. Once upon a time, not long ago, I was kidnapped…

When the river dried to mud, us brothers, we walked down to the muddy banks of where the river used to be, and with our boy hands, digging down into this mud, us brothers, we dug down to where, we believed it, there was another river there, there was another river down beneath where our…

There was something in the Bay. Or perhaps it was just the suggestion of something in the Bay like the idea of a serpent in Loch Ness. The Bay was older than the Loch, and the rumor of something in the Bay was even older. The Squaxin fished the Bay long before the first Americans…

The girl pretends she’s already in New York. The thought gives her a shimmery, golden feeling behind her collarbone. Lately, everything and everyone injures her. She’s become lugubrious and she’s only twenty-two. She has gained the approval of the landlady who takes note of her freshly pressed uniform. It is the way I am, too,…

You never could get used to waking up early, flipping to HBO, and grinding out a few miles on the treadmill. You enjoyed your shoes pounding gravel, liked seeing trees and faces. You needed your mornings peaceful. “Use your head,” I said more than once about you running at night. You wouldn’t work out during…