Tag: Fiction
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Lemon Sky and Detritus at Sunrise
I read about hope this morning on Maria Popova’s site The Marginalian. Popova ponders Steinbeck’s observations about hope as a survival effect of humans—Steinbeck calls it a “diagnostic human trait” (qtd. in Popova)—while he was on an expedition studying sea creatures. Nonetheless, as much as Steinbeck acknowledges that “hope cushions the shock of experience” (qtd.…
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The Weight
I had a dream while Dan and I were dating, one of the times that we had broken up. I was in a web like a moth’s cocoon. I had no responsibility, no fear; I was just suffused with a feeling of safety and inner peace. I remember feeling like that as a child, lying…
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How it Begins
An outside observer might think the ground floor of this two-family Tudor-style McMansion in northeastern Queens is empty: coming from a 500-square-foot junior 1-bedroom on the Lower East Side means that Sheila and Pat’s furniture fills only the southwest corner of the living room. Last month Pat’s mom surprised Sheila with an elaborate baby shower,…
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Clearview to Nowhere
I spy the moon on the eastbound Long Island Expressway service road from between a tow truck and a Parks Department pick-up loaded with dead limbs and recently felled branches. Green leaves form a rooftop garden on top of the truck.