Nonfiction
Our Birds
It was among the first birds my wife and I spotted on our first outing in Guatemala, in a busy grove beside a pond on a lush hillside. It’s not a hard bird to identify, a rich blue above, rusty-chested, … Continue reading
The Sad Autoerotica of Crawfish Etouffee
When the old woman with no upper lip tells you, in the Faubourg Marigny, that to pluck a crawfish from the bayou is akin to the tying of a silk scarf around one’s neck, that, as these little freshwater crustaceans … Continue reading
Have You Ever Seen Such a Sight in Your Life
“Sicko! Weirdo!” A moment of silence. Then the young woman started over. She was in the observation room, to the north of the day room. It was where they put the worst patients when they first came in, people who … Continue reading
Aliens
It was a bright, moonlit Sunday night on March 14, 1966, when Frank Mannor’s dogs began barking frantically. Frank and his nineteen-year-old son Ronnie went outside their ramshackle farmhouse to investigate. In the distance they saw lights and a faint … Continue reading
The Face-Blind
1 Once, discovering a crying child in a Pittsburgh department store, I knelt to ask that girl the lost and found questions, her name, her address, and who had mislaid her in Gimbel’s, a store that featured thirteen floors of … Continue reading
When the Plow Broke the Plains
the desire for rain was so strong folks killed snakes, hung them belly-up from fences. In between the blankets of dust and half-buried children, the miles of crisp carcasses stretched over barbed-wire, men dropped to their knees, many for the … Continue reading
Breaking a Window on the World: The Poetry of Marie Howe
In a murderous time/ the heart breaks and breaks/ and lives by breaking. —Stanley Kunitz (from “The Testing Tree”) …We were still men,/ but maimed. Another kind of hurt lodged/ where happiness had smoldered, another kind/ of ruin, and summer … Continue reading