Colonel George Corkhill of the Chronicle was ushered into Justice Samuel Miller’s parlor, and anxiously removed his hat. His face was flushed, and his countenance bore the marks of bad news. “The position of Chief Justice will be offered to Senator Conkling, sir.” Corkhill spoke with hesitation, for he was thrusting a dagger into the heart of his father-in-law.

I would wake and watch
from my bedroom window
as the snow fell in a waterfall of white
under the glow of the streetlight,
a suburban beacon shining
on my narrow side road.

It’s almost midnight when they leave the beach, tired, thirsty, still too high from the freely flowing weed. They’re jammed into Ed’s aging blue Volkswagen, Lisbeth up front, Jonathan and Denise crowbarred into the tiny back seat as they head onto the Mid-Cape Highway for the trip back to Manhattan from Truro.

I find myself lying down on my bathroom floor again, staring at the underside of my sink, talking to my inner self. It’s only two years. Two years and then we’re done. (Why I refer to my inner self as a “we” requires a lengthy psychological profile not relevant to this particular story, but it’s often because I view my internal voice as a separate being…

If this is not a meat bun from heaven, Dr. Wu doesn’t know what would it be. A meat bun from heaven (天上掉馅饼) is a Chinese saying, meaning pure luck.
Dr. Wu has worked as a Rehab physician in the hospital in Texas for a few years. A few weeks ago, her department chief, only in his fifties, suddenly left.

When Tibby arrived on her first night with us, we let her out into the fenced backyard. On the steps, she paused for an instant, ears up, nose twitching, poised like an Olympic sprinter in the starting blocks. In the twilight, something caught her eye. Slowly, she stalked, like a panther, into the grass. Then she dashed, disappearing under the arborvitae. In a moment, Tibby emerged, triumphant, shaking a small rabbit between her jaws.

I nursed a lamb when I was eight or nine. Its mother had forsaken her, and Dad, sensing a good learning opportunity, tasked me with feeding her every morning. She had watery eyes with dark, horizontal irises; a wet, pink nose; and kinky, brown wool that felt fantastic against my cheek. We called her Rosie.

They sat in an outdoor café having a latte and a ham cachito. Her boss talked about the weather, how the government wanted to subsidize payroll, which was their way to get inside the company and eventually take it over. He put a cigarette in his mouth and offered one to Alejandra. She declined. She didn’t smoke. And while she enjoyed watching the clouds above the Avila mountain, the spacious sidewalks covered in tables, and people playing an afternoon game of chess, she was still wondering why her boss asked her to lunch.

August, and the PS.104 schoolyard was empty. A good thing. Gave me a chance to develop my pitching arm. And avoid trouble. As a white kid in the South Bronx in 1967, trouble had a way of finding me.

Two days after the moon was full
I walked as in a dreaming.
Over the black seas I yearned to be,
Where the old stars were still bright and gleaming.

Three works in clay by Aleksandra Scepanovic.
Each of these works tells a story of the complexity and beauty found in life’s fractures, embracing the wholeness that emerges through resilience.

I often woke up disoriented, emerging from dreams where everything was as it once was. My former spouse and I were happy again, sharing meals in our favorite restaurants or running together along the Chicago lakefront.

To drive past Coop City late on Saturday night
Is to see what the human worm can weave –
The coral towers stand out their lights against
The pitch-night Sound

The reader fanned the deck of cards on the table and invited me to touch them. With my right hand, I moved them in a circle, counterclockwise and confessed that I was considering abandoning my career.

My head felt like an overripe summer squash.
It was starting out to be a grim day. Though you’d never know it from looking at me, I felt like I had been cloistered all night in an assisted living facility for psychopathic chairs—a command centre for the flotsam of miserable furniture, retired and warehoused, a hub with just enough of a pleasant environment to give the illusion of living in luxury. Night terrors. I struggled to make sense of my present reality. Being a chair had its complications.

The gentleman was always a man of contradictions. Born in the quiet, unassuming town of Nowhere, Tennessee, his early life unfolded amidst the slow rhythms of rural America, where the days stretched on like the endless horizon.

The chrysalis comes in grey
matter, some lines of white
to tell the rest of me when
tearing starts.

She twirls a slender dagger in her hand, while Egypt’s Pharaoh drinks wine from a golden cup. Seth settles across his cushioned lounge, dark eyes locked firmly on Neferet’s twisting fingers.

Jake tried to kill me, Lizzie had said.
A lie, of course. But she spread it far and wide before she left California for Indiana: He tried to choke me, she’d repeat.
But—Christ!—it was just a hug, and it went down like this:
Hannah had burst into our room, turned on the light, and demanded to know which one of us was taking her to practice. Lizzie kicked me under the sheets—evidently it was my turn—but I kicked her back, club swim had been her stupid idea, just grant me a little rest.

In my earliest memory, I am falling. The last of the afternoon light is nothing but a whisper as dusk makes her provocative entrance—a lingering tease before the dark comes all at once.

She sways and watches the dark waters
Her lighthearted hums brings grief to the ears
Beautiful, piercing the silence of the night
Agony riveting like the pain of broken bones

I am lying alone on an operating table. Bright lights are shimmering above my head. I cannot speak. I am surrounded by strangers. People who have met me only moments before. And yet, I am held hostage to their intellect, their experience, their wisdom and their compassion.

His grandparents had gotten drunk on Saphire highballs with friends around the fire the night before, and the way they had started acting strangely—grinning and cackling through the evening, their faces gone somehow wicked and distant…

You knew your father had been having heart problems. Of course, you knew that. But you had not been paying enough attention—not the right kind of attention—to factually comprehend just how critical his condition might have become. In the year following your mother’s death, you were aware that he was paying ever-lessening attention to what she had hopefully called her “heartful, healthful” advice regarding his diet. And he had slacked off his previous daily walking routines and even stopped his weekly bowling league participation.