This photograph appears in our Fall 2013 issue (Vol. 60.1).
Fire
Eric’s stomach is smooth and flat and there’s a trail of hair there like on a normal person, but his thighs down to the tips of his toes are still ruddy and hairless, all the skin taut. His calves and feet have an almost molten complexion and they shine under the water like they’re waxed. He worries his body will always be this way, that…
Blackberries
We could not have been much, two junkyard kids picking blackberries down by the log pond until our thumbs and tongues stung black with love and the footfalls of hunters down by the water made my shoulders narrow, made me step against you. This piece appears in our Fall 2013 issue (Vol. 60.1).
Dead Languages
The last known speakers of American English were garbage men. In a rural county of Ohio they worked sorting trash for a nanoshuffler that emitted ozone and vitamin gas. They spoke normally elsewhere, but since most had a grandparent who dealt in that strange vernacular, they liked to maintain a fluency exclusive to themselves. One among them picked up the dialect from scratch, putting in…
Make the Mark
An excerpt from “Make the Mark” by Trevor Dodge, appearing in Fall 2013 (Vol. 60.1). We’re in the ER but there’s no blood, nothing broken. When they check my wife in they ask her the part about rating her pain on a scale of 1-10. The mousy woman with horn-rimmed glasses and skin so pale it’s nearly transparent was the one who asked. My wife…