It’s safer in the dark, and when the lights go down I’m glad. The screen ahead wakes up in startled white, and, as a soft drink commercial plays, someone in the booth adjusts the camera: The image jerks to center, then settles into focus. A couple stumbles their way into seats and pulls off their …
A little past five, I stood at the stove. Footsteps sounded on the front porch, a whir of wheels, the rattle of a chain, and the snap of a lock. The front door opened, and someone crossed the living room. Wearing a quilted down vest and a helmet, Laurel stood in the archway. “Good evening, …
How is it that she’s come to this? From flapper to frump, sitting here in an oversized sweater, the color of cerulean blue, her hair a frowsy tangle — though just now she doesn’t care about that. There’s sun in her chest that’s pushing out through her limbs. She’s still. Warm. She knows this place, …
May 3, 2000–that fateful Wednesday. When I got up that morning at 5:30, I didn’t realize what an eventful day it would be. I had retired about nine years earlier, and Wednesday had become the day to mow the lawn. I remember that the weather was turning warmer—warm, that is, for Minnesota. It had been …
The young boy built a tree house in the oak And climbed and lived there through the summer hours. In the early morning, with a favorite book, He lay and read above the meadow flowers. In the later morning with a knife and stick He whittled arrows for his taut-curved bow; Above his head the …
Bruno Williams pressed the button on the recordable turntable and spoke into the microphone: “This is a confession. A reluctant one but my crime has been witnessed, and there is no way out. I killed Sonny Bumbass, my neighbor of 15 years in this Brooklyn tenement, today, July 12, 1959, at roughly 9 p.m. and …
Click:全国楼凤论坛 Perry had always believed that after death, there was only infinite blackness; to find himself, then, in what appeared to be a sleazy cash advance storefront was somewhat surprising. “Next,” droned the secretary behind the counter, and Perry realized she meant him. “Name, date of birth, and geographical coordinates of your exiting.” Her hair …
Today is the 235th birthday of Washington Irving. The prolific author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” published a few stories in the Post. “The Ruined One,” a morose and sentimental tale of love in the English countryside appeared in Atkinson’s Saturday Evening Post in 1836. The story also appeared in …
I can’t swear that I was actually in the annual Christmas pageant at the Hungarian Reformed Church in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1982. I can conjure a hazy memory of my childhood self on stage, wearing a homemade shepherd’s costume and doing my best to look sore afraid, but who’s to say that I’m not …
Hors d’oeuvres They both brought bacon-turkey wraps, but his was heightened with baseball mustard while she had horseradish dijon instead. Their yogurt was Greek, their hummus garlic-infused. Both had celery and carrot sticks, but he ignored the celery while she looked at the carrots as if they were plagued. For dessert they had green apples …