The Other Osama

Fiction
  He was born with a silver knife in his mouth. And he was its first victim. —Osama Alomar   Inside, the shop was limewashed and long enough to fit…

The Bar at the End of the World

Fiction
  The local news, projected to the bar by way of their staticky, cafeteria tray–sized TV, warned of severe storm conditions, possible flash flooding. That afternoon, the odd car that…

Driftwood

Fiction
  A few days after I moved into the abandoned fisherman’s shack by the NIPSCO plant, my new neighbor Hymie gave me a hunting rifle and a box of ammo.…

Good New Teeth

Fiction
  The old man woke up screaming. The nurse, asleep in the next room and dreaming of the seaside, heard the scream as a black harpy screeching toward a flock…

All You Left

Memoir
  Much later, when I was twenty-eight years old, I met up with our childhood friends at a bar in our Connecticut hometown the night before your funeral and they…

Alluvium

poetry
  Having settled I had to be down with the man who taught me   to understand the geologic scale of things. The man   who made me— see that?…

Inheritance

poetry
  dilapidation on the lawn we watch without sorrow; a chair, perhaps is the irretrievable earth   appraising, I think, this came from my father’s country where bricks are the…

After He Leaves

poetry
  Your house is a room that follows the sun, changes constantly like light-sensitive glasses. On the hottest days, the carpet retreats and a low vinyl tide creeps in. You…

At the Same Time

poetry
  At the funeral, they sprinkled grains of dirt into my palm, but I saw no point in throwing them into a hole that could never be filled. The only…