China Taste I DM John Cheever on Twitter when I see that his most recent tweet says, looking for a good time. In my message, I say, aren’t we all? And he says, We must look for light where we can find it. Classic John Cheever. We end up talking and talking turns into going…

“It seems that Zeus was preparing a wedding banquet for Peleus and Thetis and did not want to invite Eris because of her reputation as a troublemaker.” — Principia Discordia + Before Eris plucks the apple up and bowls it down the hall of emerald and ruby, saffron and butter, where the joyful bacchanal is…

Daydreams Her favorite thing is to read about the antics of the little prince who lives halfway around the globe. Yesterday — or would it be two days ago in his time zone? — he rode in a baroque open air carriage that looked like it belonged in a museum. When he stuck out his…

The sheep gather in the middle of the field. Their whisper rises: Furze. Whin. Gorse. The green is at its greenest this month; the dandelion clocks wait to sound the hour; daisies and buttercups jostle for notice. Furze. Whin. Gorse, the sheep bleat, while the plant they esteem glows like sunshine. A vixen, teats pimpling…

I didn’t go to the funeral. My grief was too obtuse, too childish to be experienced communally. Instead I put on a black concert tee and watched infomercials like we sometimes did. It took the television twenty-eight minutes to sell us any old thing. Not that either of us had any money. Magic brooms, toilet…

Every Friday afternoon at 12:15 p.m., Chanda retrieves the Yale key from under the reclining green-hatted gnome, lets herself in the window-paneled pine wood door, strips on the way upstairs (unlike at her place, there’s no significant other or sticky five-year-old to necessitate picking her clothes up) and gets into the Egyptian-cotton sheeted, king-sized bed…

I. Chris draws back the curtain of the shower and uses a washcloth to scrub the condensation from the full-length mirror on the back of the door. They stand, naked, and stare at themself. They’ve thinned a bit since high school, they’re trying to go mostly vegan, and yet. And yet, their thighs are round,…

I came across a library behind a dilapidated two-story house one afternoon when I was walking to the pharmacy around the corner from my mother’s house. The library was red and square with gilded letters. I couldn’t remember it being there before, but it was possible that it was new or that I had missed…

Rub the coarse fur. Let his heat warm your hands. White his yellow coat with suds that split the sun. Smooth his fattened belly, hoping it’s not all cardboard and plastic bags, that le mouton, the ram, also ate mango skins and fish heads with all the other garbage in Yoff, where he roamed the…

The day after I got the news about my father, I drove to the mall to buy a suit. It was the middle of the afternoon, bright and hot, but the parking lot was nearly empty. Fat seagulls, with feathers the color of spent mops, congregated near the entrance doors. I had to remember where…

Because I didn’t have a dad, I identified with two guys: Jesus Christ and Darth Vader. Jesus was easy on Mom. She liked Jesus. She went to church all the time and kept a Bible in the parlor. She read passages daily, sometimes to herself, sometimes to me. Jesus, my mom was cool with. Darth…

During the interview process, he dazzled everyone in the department. He made playful associations between the novels of Edith Wharton and the social theory of Thorstein Veblen, between Jean Toomer and hip-hop. He said: My philosophy is that if Lil Yachty doesn’t talk about it, it didn’t happen. No one knew if he was serious…