Essays
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Patching Up The Past
When Novak ran past shouting, “Incoming!” I tumbled out of my GI hammock and scrambled to a sandbagged culvert hooch, waiting out the attack with squad leader Lloyd Edge. At the all clear signal we emerged to shouts that a…
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Pomegranate Season in the Underworld
This is the difference I am trying to name. The pomegranate on the shelf and the pomegranate on the newspaper. The fruit polished for display, and the fruit cracked open in a living room. The version of a place that…
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The Godbrother
Candida founded the agency; she was a middle-aged powerhouse with a keen literary eye, taste, and a no-nonsense air. She’d ushered Joseph Heller through the 22 rejections of what was then called “Catch-18” before she found him a publisher. She…
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Self. Pleasure.
After all that foreplay, I’m brooding—my feathers, ruffled. Then, the me who wants me takes me to bed, undresses me slowly, covers me in kisses. I’ve always had a way with me: I know what I want and how to…
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A Potion for Sadness
A nurse stood at the door—scrubs, clipboard, the whole nine yards. “We’re ready for you,” she said. I followed her down a hall and behind a curtain, where I changed into the robe, laid back in the wheelie-bed, and sexted…
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Her Bitterness: A Woman’s Choice
For years, she only talked about how lucky we were to pull through as a family. It was luck for my father and me, I think, to be the survivors of 0.01 percent. But what was it for her, when…
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Wake of Weight
People think losing weight feels natural and glorious, like a snake finally shedding its skin. That’s what I’d imagined: the victorious satisfaction of squishing out the last toothpaste from my tube.
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Big Beautiful Home
From the beginning, Our House drew me in, with its bright red door contrasting against the deep blue exterior—my favorite colors. Inside, as I wandered from room to room, I asked myself, Is this Our House?
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He Could Be Like Cronus
Three years later, as a freshman in college, I decide to reach out to him again. My email is brief; part of me is afraid maybe my mother lied or was wrong. Perhaps he is not my father. Still, I…
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On This Father’s Day
My wife and children give me every reason to feel loved, to feel appreciated, to feel needed. Every year, like every day, my family makes me feel like I’m special—that I’m their dad, that I’m her husband. But my wife…
