Browse Topics

By The Roadside

Afterlife

Her, Rising

Yes, there are the memories / like little phylacteries strapped to our minds, / and there are the ways we know our dead / have worked inside us

The Dead Boy At Your Window

In a distant land, a woman looked upon the unmoving form of her newborn baby and refused to see what the midwife saw.

Fritz’s Heart

They want to make all pain go away, but that is impossible. Pain is like the sand in an hourglass: a certain amount must sift through your soul before your life is over.

Trudy Deere Goes To Heaven

I’ve been in the hospital four days when they put another woman in the room with me — an old farm wife from Beardstown, by the name of Trudy Deere. Trudy Deere has been in a car accident. She’s recuperating.

Morning In The Mission; Grandpop Comes To Visit

The Funeral Home: The Fun House

Fear Kills

I think I tried to describe what I actually feared. The crushing weight of eternal time. The dizzying space of infinity. I remember he laughed a bit as I brought these things up — so big a subject for such a little kid.

Luck Disguised As Ordinary Life

On the way back to the hotel, Martina whispered in a conspiratorial tone that her friend Carlos Castaneda was coming to join us for tea. “Don’t tell anyone. It’s just for us. He’s a bit finicky about who he hangs out with.”