The Pig Who Ate Too Well That summer we were living on the rez-de-chaussée of an old building in Montparnasse. The building was four storeys high, with one apartment on each floor and a fifth in the basement, where the elderly landlady, Madame Chaumier, lived with her Vietnamese pot-bellied pig Rémy. The black pig was
The Real Fast Sooner Hound A traveling salesman was on his way to Tulsa when he saw a man standing by the highway with his thumb out. The man had a scruffy, raw-boned long-legged dog with him, but the salesman liked dogs, and there was plenty of room for the animal in the back seat
Haiku On The Impeachment of Trump The land is withered By a raging orange sun. It sets. Rain returns.
Haiku On The Impeachment of Trump The land is withered By a raging orange sun. It sets. Rain returns.
The Land The dream companion, me, but more persuasive, whispered the cantrip on the first night I was afraid to sleep, after my sixtieth birthday when my final friends, all aging, all some way bereft, came down, a-down a-down-o mocking me, gently, but mocking all the same. “Come on,” he said, this voice from the
Dead Low Water It was September 8th, my birthday, and I was spending it at my family’s rambling old hilltop vacation house on Cape Cod. I got up very early and descended the two flights of back stairs from the attic bedroom that had been mine when I was a child. Arthritis had recently begun
Abigail Shatten was losing patience with her brother Nathaniel. It was getting on for winter, and the old fool hadn’t begun to split fresh stovewood. “Cold snap comin’”, she said. “If you don’t get crackin’, we’re gonna freeze by Christmas.” “Quit your naggin’, Abby,” he grunted. “Plenty of time for that. We got enough for
The Land The dream companion, me, but more persuasive, whispered the cantrip on the first night I was afraid to sleep, after my sixtieth birthday when my final friends, all aging, all some way bereft, came down, a-down a-down-o mocking me, gently, but mocking all the same. “Come on,” he said, this voice from the
Casting Couch Back in the Sixties, when I was starting out as an actor, I’d certainly heard of this particular piece of compromising furniture. But as I made the rounds of auditions, I had never encountered it, even metaphorically. The producers and directors I met were thoroughly businesslike: a glance at my photo and résumé,