They boarded the crowded train in Kenosha. Marjorie sat in the only empty seat. Next to a sailor. The sailor smiled. Marjorie smiled. Will stood in the aisle. He held Pearl in one arm and the stroller with his free hand. He carried an overstuffed backpack. A diaper bag was slung over a shoulder. He…

Why are the whales all throwing themselves up on the beaches; do they not know by the scraping of sand on their belly, by the flush of air along their flanks, that this is not the place for them? Can they not feel, as the water recedes, that they need to twist and thrash their…

Gracely stumbled off the train and onto a rickety platform. The low clouds above her had the shape and color of oyster gills. The station was surrounded by a vast prairie of eight-foot high grassland. To Gracely, it felt like standing at the bottom of a shallow cave. The train’s arrival had silenced the songbirds,…

Translated by Tim Cummins 1 In the cooling evening, the convoy lurched along. At every hairpin bend the lead car honked their horn to alert people coming the other way of our presence. Someone got out and started vomiting up their aperitif. My wife stuck her head out the window but couldn’t make out who…

When she returned to Dauphine Street after the funeral, she removed the draperies from every window of their monstrous house before she removed even her patent-leather heels, which made ascending and descending the stepladder difficult, even foolish. But she wanted no gossip. Let the whole Marigny regard her life through the clean glass. Let all…

After four months without a phone call or letter, our Uncle returned to Portland on Christmas Eve with a cocktail waitress he had covered head to toe in fresh mud. He’d done the same to himself except he’d added a humble sash of maple leaves and was also wearing a helmet made of twigs, and…

Whatever you want.2 Whatever you want is what I want.3 Whatever you want is what I want and I want whatever you want.4 Whatever you want is what I want and I want whatever you want because you want it.5 I only want what you want.6 I don’t want.7 I only want what you want,…

The plan (unspoken but mutual) had been to break up after the movie. It’s over, but let’s spend an evening mourning it, externalizing its collapse onto flickering lights in a dark theater. For me, the simultaneous closeness and distance — sharing an armrest and a bag of popcorn, yet silent and facing forward, no more…

On their third date, beholding the object itself, Mellie said to Brooke, “Your clit is a perfect purple turtle.” “Don’t,” Brooke said, and stirred away. Later, when Mellie had claimed a spot in the nook under Brooke’s arm, the reason: “My ex is a turtle.” What’s more, Brooke’s ex still lived with her. “His name’s…

Before our men all left in ’42, there he’d been. Our windows pointed at their driveway. His cigarettes pulled my chin like a fish hook — sleek, not painless. I’d see the couple next door necking by their truck and leer from our living room, dust clean blinds as an excuse to watch. Sometimes I…

Aunt Pam sent lavender hand cream as a gift. Its glass bottle was thick and would have been expensive to ship, so she emptied the lotion directly into a padded mailing envelope. She believed her method was sensible; bubble wrap was waterproof, and the edges were easily sealed by tape. She kept saying, “What’s the…

I lived without a mother for most of my life. She was in Montreal, hiding from us, hysterical, as they once said. The way I remembered her was through the photo albums we stowed in our attic bedroom, covers grayed by the dust that fell from the rafters. Because my older brother and I would…