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…

Foghorn adjusts in the chair. His breast brushes up against the table and he tries to settle in. His tail feathers brush up against the wall. If he stood quickly he would take the whole table with him. If he had some kind of disability there would be a special chair, a special table, a…

In the mornings, Olive has an hour of unattended play before the nanny wakes up. She figured this out during this nanny’s first week, but she waited, like a rational person, to test her calculations, to ensure she would be alone. Adults sometimes wavered in their behavior. Her mother made sure that Olive knew this,…

“Inhale and root yourself through your feet,” says the yoga instructor. “Reach.” And each resident reaches, forgetting to breathe. “Now, release and yearn your sternum forward.” “Did she say turn? Or yearn?” Eve whispers to Virgil, who slouches deep into the seat of his wheelchair. The CD in the stereo skips. “I don’t think I…

1. Dolores adores ice cream; she even sports a Rocky Road tattoo on her right butt cheek. But after watching a food production documentary on PBS, she becomes aware of the plight of the dairy cows. How they crowd together in their airless pens. How the babies are torn from their mothers’ teats. How the…

I imagine Stacy when she’s not around, imagine her sinuous legs stretching across the firm white sheet of a hospital bed, swish. I imagine the sounds her body makes: Plip plop goes Stacy’s flesh as skin balloons with gelatin, screetch goes bone against bone as the cartilage curls away. A clink like zipper clips detaching…

After our island’s veterinarian died, the cat population exploded. We were already used to shooing them away from our doors as we left for work, whether it was to the counter at the pharmacy, down to the docks to fish or operate the ferry, or to teach at the only school we had. We knew…

Friday. First week of kindergarten. Everybody sitting in a circle around teacher. Waiting to go out to the buses home. You really need to use the bathroom. Like really, really. But the day is almost done. You’ll be home soon. While you wait, teacher asks what everyone wants to be when they grow up. You’re…

The spots are so smooth that Franklin wouldn’t notice them if he closed his eyes and ran his thumb across her like he was testing a piece of furniture. They are the size of typewriter buttons, making her look like a leopard as she lies across the bed in the unforgiving light of the motel…

I’ve heard that a blue whale’s veins are so large that a human could swim, naiad-like, through them, diving into the thick currents nourished by a towering heart that thundered like bells. Such a caprice is not easy to forget, and if I could take that bloody journey, I would indeed. I would wear platelets…

After his father died, and he became a father himself, Payam remembered his father’s excitement to tell him about the business of real estate, which was not so much an excitement about real estate as an excitement about life, which Payam knew, and which every once in a while he would tell himself to keep…