Category: Story Time

My five-year-old nephew calls the corona virus “the disease,” like a 1300s plague prophetin underoos and velcro shoes warning the masses: stay away from the playgroundor you’ll get the disease.

Two days after the crack in the floor of our barn appeared, they found Davie O’Hare’s body in the woods. Me and Sadie were up at the schoolhouse when they found him, so we didn’t get to see, but word gets around anyway. They say he was shriveled up like a raisin, all his blood [...]

(Japanese) The practice of buying more books than you can read. Of course, I did.From my first UniversityWomen’s Book Sale where bookswere piled on every table.Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Romefor a nickel?  Of course.Twelve individual Shakespeare playsin hard covers for 5 cents apiece?Sold.  Goldsmith’s Collected Poemsfor a quarter?  No question. They gave me a banana box for mybounty, could barely carry [...]

The deer are moving again, sojourners of snow, shovel-faced bambis that shit brown M&M’s in the yard without regard. The nerve of these white-tailed vagabonds. The nerve of these dashers and dancers that couldn’t pull a fat child let alone a fat man. Don’t they know we are dying and bats (maybe) laugh in their [...]

Effort The first full day of spring, 2020, is a white meringue of snow under a blue sky, sunglasses essential. Four of us meet at a course groomed for Nordic skiing, snap boots into bindings, and take up our poles. Volunteers have packed new and winding trails this year, wide and smooth for skate-skiing. We’re [...]

YOU WOULDN’T KNOW the place was there at all, if you didn’t know where to look.  It’s a long way out, Carrie told people, knowing they would get only as far as the old cemetery, where pavement gave way to dirt winding darkly through corridors of pine and brush. Then they would turn back, thinking they had passed it. [...]

No one talks about the life rattle, the one she makes in her crib, florid with her first-ever cold—the result of a germ you overlooked. The perks of parenthood, unlimited stains on your record, dishonour splashed across your breast. You could signpost every spot: first waddle through the busted gate; the burner where you superheat [...]