In Eugene, Oregon I used to live with two women — Charlene and Ms. T. We were young, we weren’t fluent in anything and had never been anywhere but we talked about Europe like we grew up on baguettes and Da Vinci. We read each other Krishnamaruti’s philosophy of unattachment and stole neighborhood cherries, plums…

Once upon a time in the wheezing heart of America… The leaves are dying all their little deaths. On the way home, Elle’s cigarette whispers smoke into her clothes. Jo joins her, kicking up dust in her ass-kicking boots. They pass a women’s clinic and its handful of protestors. “I hate our fucking school,” Jo…

People in the street and on the subway began looking at her oddly. Double takes with furrowed brows and cinched mouths, as if trying to place where they’d seen her before. The other day in the Laundromat, she even thought she heard a woman whisper to her little girl, “Hey, it’s Betty Zongo.” She wondered…

Before the nurse closed the door, she poked her head in my room and said, “Sugar, you gonna lose your milk if that baby don’t suck.” My eyes opened, crusted with sleep. “Or you can pump,” she said. She patted the metal doorknob, her ring clinking against it. “‘Night, Rhonda.” My name is Brenda. She…

Clusters of Home Depot deck furniture, ambience of chlorine, of eighties music murmured from rock-shaped speakers, iced upscale beer and cheapish wine, a no lifeguard on duty sign, a no peeing in pool sign, the pool kidney-shaped and sensible, the too-blue water refracting a vinyl pool liner, platter of splayed white and yellow cheeses in…

THEN Savosoyah was a proud man. For his wife, for his son, for his daughter: he protected and provided. Few men could climb rock as he could; few men could shape and wield a spear with equal skill. But when his young daughter took pained and feverish, Savosoyah was overcome with helplessness. He tried and…

It was a game, is all. That summer we needed something to distract us. Because all that stuff we’d hoped for wasn’t going to happen. None of it. Different reasons for each of us, but they all came down to the same thing: at least another year stuck. Right here. Jen started it. She tears…

The mail lady stopped me on the street, pointing to the house kitty-corner from mine. Had I seen those people? She couldn’t fit any more mail into the box. “Come to think of it,” I said, “I can’t remember the last time.” I would say they were a professional couple, lean gray suits coming and…

First they banned novels, because they said — reasonably enough — that the world was complicated enough and the problems of the world grave enough, without the distraction of imagined worlds and non-existent problems. I was a young man back then. I remember standing outside the City Hall and watching the people bring cart-loads of…

Before his father ruins everything and they no longer have car trips, Daniel thinks about the future of family radio. When the whole family is in the car, his father rules a classic rock kingdom where everyone but his sister and her headphones resides. When his father is not in the car, the radio belongs…

On Telling This Story The epidemics were relentless, like the epidemic of laziness—during that one I couldn’t have even told this story, not that I am sure I wanted to tell it, not that I am sure I want to tell it now. The telling is relentless, too. + The Man in the Hills We…

First of all, don’t complicate things. You only need one card. If you’re a Persian-Jew, be Persian. If you’re a poor Arab, that’s great, that’s quite sad, but also a bit redundant. Just say which country, which village you’re from. If you’re mixed, pick the one with the most syllables or better, the one currently…