Articles

after Untitled (Hang iambics), Cy Twombly, 1994 so why not ask that halo of dark whisper for anything, everything: why not write the litany of wax and ash on the first page of the book ofAll My Shortcomings? Haven’t I lived long enoughin the bone hollow, long enough in bonebreak and brakelight?When do I not …

I am seventeen and driving fast on a two-lane highway with the windows open. It’s late afternoon, that hour when the day’s edges are singed gold. I’m alone, and because I’ve just recently gotten my license, this aloneness is a thing of wonder. The light in the Long Island sky seems to be telling me …

It takes very little to become a difficult patient. Having questions, feeling unexplained or anomalous pain, being uncajoled, seeming nervous for one’s first dose of chemo. The nurse looked at me sideways as I walked into the chemo-complex, and asked, “Are you all right?” as if I should have been. As if I looked excessively …

Piya has just turned thirty. She works in her family’s hotel. Tonight she will become pregnant. In twenty-some weeks, she will lose the baby, and the state of Indiana will sentence her to twenty years in prison for feticide. One year for every week. But for now, it is early on Tuesday, and on Tuesdays …

Peng Soon had knocked the glass of vodka and lime out of Paul’s hand at Taboo the first time they met. He had swung out his arm to illustrate a point in the story he was telling—a recent sexual conquest on a business trip to Taipei—and his hand met Paul’s glass. Unruffled, Peng Soon ran …

To be a child again. Is my wish. Something earthy and pleasant. Something before knowledge. Before. Me and the kids down the street making wooden gravestones with our names on them for Halloween, before we knew that one kid would die. How the gravestones lived with us years after, in the garage. Childhood, like a …