Pedro Hermoso de Fuentebonito and Antonio Espíritu Santo mounted horses beside a third rider. The gates opened: roaring crowds made Espíritu Santo

It was about a month after everything got all messed up, that I took Iris for Italian ices on a squinty sun-bleached

Big Bird felt especially clever after pocketing a plastic ashtray from the local tavern after last call on Tuesday night. The barmaid

Who can conjugate madness, shadows, apparitions from the untime of legend and myth--from the world always next to the commonest, simplest scenes

“So, are you going to go see him?” Bud asked, and when Earl answered, “See Who?”, Bud smirked and said, “See who,

We encouraged everyone to attend our reunions of embassy personnel once assigned to Bolivia. Nothing fancy. We gathered in homes around D.C.,

Anne convinces Dad to move into our upstairs guest room, a few weeks after the funeral. He and I haven’t spoken since

“Music is love in search of a word.” – Sidney Lanier Mr.Adam Fisk, high school instrumental music teacher, stood looking out his

People often ask me where it all began for me, and I say different things at different times, but usually I say

1. The Esopus Creek is a gushing brown torrent this fall from the September rain, but the trees surrounding the creek shimmer

Five weeks after the hospital in Oaxaca called to tell us that Mom had died of complications from a drug overdose, her

I have bought some of your supplies. Sparse, random: a thin brush and a squat black marker, a half-full bottle of linseed

The psychic held Lydia’s palm aloft, tracing the lines with black nails. Months ago, Lydia would have called bullshit and gone back

Jost had a job to do, and he would do it. He was as old-fashioned and square as a woodcut of a

For the longest time Nada was two things: one, greenblue peacock eyes that sparkle big whenever she readied herself to say something,

My three best friends in high school were older and a bad influence. There was Pile, who loved Led Zeppelin and Hostess

I sit above Sostenuto Avenue at my window in a third-floor walk-up. I’ve been on the avenue nigh on sixty years and

Meet me at 9, the note read, across from my building. Friday morning broke hot and sticky, and Stevie Eisen’s stomach started

It would be impossible for anyone to lead a more ordinary life than Bobby Parker, whose life was ordinary to the extent

It’s a melancholy chamber, willow wallpaper and a power-steam humidifier trying to spread calm across six pews sulking on either side of

The train pushes through the unexpectedly blooming and green landscape at a high speed. Then it finally comes to a halt, but

Frank felt edgy all week.  Preparations for Bennett & Co.’s RESTORE AMERICA fund-raising tour were taking over all his time: petitioning the

     -2 (Title)      You have it wrong. It was ‘Edit’, I am sure.       It has changed.       Why? The whole

       In the exhilarating atmosphere of scholarly and cultural exchange following the fall of the Berlin Wall, John Dee had been

Bob can play a number of instruments, none of them well. He likes his guitar, an Ovation with a sensual, curving back.

  Now, this was not one of those cases in which a pig is killed in sacrifice and its private parts are

1. The End I went home—after three hungry years, a dozen awful addresses, and too many leftover 60s prophets and 80s mental

Venerable Xoratio Rey is now very ill and there is no hope he will be able to live out his dream. That

Rush hour was over but traffic in the city was still bad. The long summer days kept the streets busy. Chuy did

It didn’t announce itself, the difference in the room, but it was there, of that he was positive. It wasn’t the soft

Abbott, West Virginia, the town with a funny name, was a funny place to live. Needing somewhere to hang for the winter,

Shards of sunlight flickered off the car’s bumper as it disappeared over a rise in the road. Josh stared at the bright

It was the penultimate day of the working week, after the English fashion. Dominguinho was glancing through the paper first thing in

Karel Dibcek woke up and thought for a moment that he was still in Prague. He lay warm inside the duvet, his

Thirty-five years before he died, a man with straight and thick but graying hair hurried down the worn carpeting of a steep

Portents were in the air. First, to be given a shilling was remarkable. We were both handed a piece of the silver

I More excited than she’d ever been before, Ankbanatacha rushed into her parents’ bedroom — feeling indulged as only a loving, guileless

  In this first summer night in the year of the itch, I watch the rain clouds collide and part in a

“What kind of a name is Moses O’Reilly?” said Joe Babylon. I didn’t answer him because I was too scared to talk.

Cotton Barbeau thought of himself as both lucky and damn smart. He was called Cotton by everyone who knew him even though

I felt an irritation on my right shoulder and tapped my skin. Something awoke in me. A new sense of awareness overtook

Third day out, the oddest feeling overtook me. A hybrid of nostalgia and deja-vu, this fuzzy childhood sense-memory of melancholy bliss. I

The note, if one word could be referred to as such, was on eggshell-blue stationery, and had come in a neat blank

Christian Gimel was killed by a falling stand-up piano on the day The Dyke was painting the staircase in her apartment building.

“Aren’t we quaint — sitting around this stage prop of a country store with a leaky pickle barrel as our centerpiece? Reminds

The day of, I find my husband in her room, kneeling in front of her bed. It is a moment suspended like

September 1, 1970 ImageI have lived here for the past fifteen years eight of them alone save for Jason and Carruthers. They’ve

Each morning she stood on the bank casting her line into the water and reeling it in slowly as white smoke curled

Through habit, and for no other reason, they sat in a ring, each observer and observed. It was a way as good

A child-slave’s blood washes the feet of the black prince in the mute heart of Africa. The prince will later use his

Here I was, forty-five years later, coming back to Saugus, looking to find something I had lost. Though I’d been told I

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The first time I saw him was in our shift room. We were coming in mornings—early mornings. The night shift had already

“I want us to ride over to Aeria,” decided Mr. Bell early on the morning of the bank robbery. “We’ll take your

Not long ago, when his parents were alive and his sister didn’t have to live in a trailer or dress up as

He’d wound up pretty well and delivered a hell of a punch. It hurt a lot and I banged my head hard