Bitter Orange
Claire Fuller
"They must think I don’t have long left because today they allow the vicar in. Perhaps they are right, although this day feels no different from yesterday, and I imagine tomorrow will go on much the same."
Home Archive by category Excerpts (Page 80)
Excerpts
Samuel Johnson’s Eternal Return
Martin Riker
"What happened next happened quickly, and in my shock and emotional confusion, I took for granted that everything passing before my eyes was part of the standard procedure for a soul departing this world. I failed to wonder, as I sailed over the forest floor, why my flight was horizontal rather than vertical, or why I seemed to be headed into town rather than in a more heavenly direction."
Weather Woman
Cai Emmons
"At Odiorne Point State Park the sight of the ocean is immediately tranquilizing. She loves the sand, the cool trembling water, the ranting gulls, the waves’ susurrus. The ocean holds onto an untouchable wildness that the rest of the world is losing."
“Chronicle of a Marriage, Foretold”
Chaya Bhuvaneswar
"Mikki wakes with her head tilted to the side, her young face, neck, and whole body reaching for a person—somebody with a vague but extremely attractive description, who has been lying with great patience and anticipation next to her and must be tall—though she has been alone in bed for all the hours of the night, as she has been every night here. And yet this unknown person takes up space."
Craving
Esther Gerritsen, Trans. Michele Hutchison
"Elisabeth's hands are resting on her stomach. She feels every vibration under her skin. The hands rest there with the same expectation as during her pregnancy— that movement is on its way, that the child will swim towards the hands, that it will turn there, twist, push, roll."
Moon of the Crusted Snow
Waubgeshig Rice
"A crack echoed through the boreal landscape, a momentary chaos in the still afternoon air. In the near distance, a large bull moose fell to its side."
“The Wilder People Have Wilder Gods”
Diane Williams
"I would like to see you soon in case you have the freedom was the note I sent to him while in an altered state. No reply came."
Big City
Marream Krollos
"She used to actually say a little prayer every time she heard sirens at night in this city. She would pray for whoever might be bleeding. Now every time she hears sirens she wonders how much can naturally leave the body at the same time."
Bindi
Paul Matthew Maisano
"There it is, flagging in my mind’s eye. 1993. As though it bore more weight than the years that came before or after, as if all time weren’t equally fleeting and its passage—already twenty-five years—impartial."
River
Esther Kinsky, Trans. Iain Galbraith
"What were my memories of rivers, now that I lived on an island whose thoughts were turned seawards, where rivers looked shallow and pretty, noticeable only when they frayed into flats, or cut deep channels as they flowed out to sea?"
Poso Wells
Gabriela Alemán, Trans. Dick Cluster
"Bella Altamirano entered the shop called El Descanso, owned by Rosa Quintero, her best friend. She greeted Rosa with a kiss that the shopkeeper returned automatically while wrapping up some herbs in newspaper and counting out the money a young girl was paying for them."
The Golden State
Lydia Kiesling
"I am staring out the window of my office and thinking about death when I remember the way Paiute smells in the early morning in the summer before the sun burns the dew off the fescue."
The Deeper The Water The Uglier The Fish
Katya Apekina
"It's our second day in New York City. We're with Dennis Lomack. Mom is in St. Vincent's, resting. She has recently done something very stupid and I'm the one who found her."
“The Good War”
David R. Bunch
"It was a good thought for a Good War. I have to say: Once those wrinkly little bums in the L-Towers all over the world, our state ministers (stale ministers! Ho), did well their thing. Their thing was to govern with imagination at all times, and élan."
What Luck, This Life
Kathryn Schwille
"It’s not true there were no casualties on the ground when the space shuttle fell apart over Texas. Some things happened that morning, some happened later."
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