Unsettle

Tell me we’ll never get used to it. Richard Siken, 2005 The boy didn’t know what to do with sounds that entered his head and became something else. His parents would soon be caught in the glare of their weekly murder mystery, its theme a barrage of horns lingering too long on the tonic, the… More

Star-Taker

She’s on her way to my grandmother’s apartment door and listens to the elevator make that little breathing sound, that unsteady inhalation, as it travels from her penthouse at 10 Gracie Square to our 8th floor. I can almost hear her remembering my paternal grandmother, the woman she’s thought of as Esther from when she… More

Imaging Figures #7: Actionable Bodies

The wolf is entitled to the lamb. The Mountain Wreath (1847) You would not believe how many words there are for home and what savage music there can be wrung from it. Edna O’Brien (2015) For months now, I’ve seemed to live in a crowd of stories. The second epigraph to Edna O’Brien’s recent novel,… More