Articles tagged "Childhood"
January 19th
Hildur is seven. She says when people die they lie motionless in a coffin –she shows me how–forever in heaven. She says she’s preparing herself. She says she will pick a very comfortable…...
Dolls and Angels
Hannan didn’t realize how late it was or even that it was late. Today was different. It was an extraordinary moment in every respect. Her mother was no longer the woman she knew, and the neighborhood…...
Is This How Women Grow Up?
It is all a matter of décor Change your bed change your body What’s the use since it is still Me betraying myself Indolent and scattered And my shadow undresses In the arms of girls, all alike,…...
The Night Sucks
Jerry Luján, a boy in a visor, is walking in a ditch alongside Menaul Street today. It’s Tuesday, five o’clock in the afternoon, and night is already upon him. In Albuquerque…...
Two Faces
Eyes closed, I see again the delicate edens growing in the frost on the windowpanes. Luminous garlands woven into the snow-covered railings during the festive season to celebrate the birth of a child-god.…...
Making a Scene
When I was little I watched a lot of movies, because my mother was always making shirts, my father was painting his pictures to sell, and so to let them work in peace, my grandmother, my mother’s…...
Slow Freight
Are we poor, Dad? Yes, Son, we’re poor. Not very. But poor enough. Why are we poor, Dad? I don’t know. Become somebody took it? Took what? I don’t know. Tibi Kárász said…...
The Toad Prince
I am standing in front of the mirror, afraid that I am bad. I am ugly because I am bad. I am a toad because the wicked witch has cast a spell on me. That’s why my head is like a toad. Jewish. Squash…...
Kornél Esti’s Bicycle Or: The Structure Of The World
As a rule, Esti looked up to his father as he did to God, but when he bought him that certain bicycle, that clinched it. The way an atheist looks up to God. Easily gliding similes never give the fate (or…...
from “The Revenge of Capablanca”
The match was held in an arena, semicircular in shape, behind the town hall. They set the table and chessboard at the center of the back line. The audience crammed in up front. Most people sat on wood…...
Walking the Keihin Factory Belt with Stuart Dybek
As usual, the boy missed the fly ball that anyone else would have caught with his eyes closed, and it rolled into a thicket of reeds by the river. The audible sighs of the other kids were like knives…...
from “The Homecoming Party”
After lunch, my grandmother always insisted we go take a nap. I would stretch out on the little bed with my eyes closed and as soon as her breathing slowed, I’d go downstairs and straight out the…...
The Game
It’s the son’s idea: he’ll hide in an armoire and, when his father walks by, he’ll jump out and scare him. The boy opens the doors, clambers under the lowest shelf, and, from inside,…...
from “Diary”
The following article contains scenes depicting nudity and sexual situations. Reader discretion is advised.
from “Ru”
I came into the world early in the Year of the Monkey, during the Tet Offensive, when long strings of fireworks hanging from the houses exploded in polyphony with the sound of machine guns. Saigon was…...
A Car Trip
After Nikolaj slams the car door shut they realize that Tobias isn't in the car. “Damnit,” he says, and looks at Mie, who unbuckles her seatbelt and gets out. He watches her walk back to…...
from “Such Small Hands”
Everything was different at the zoo. It all started at the zoo: the smell of the zoo, the nervous excitability as we stepped off the minibus. All that was new: the zoo. All that was violent: the zoo. And…...
from “Broken Glass Park”
I hate men. Anna says good men do exist. Nice, friendly men who cook and help clean up and who earn money. Men who want to have children and give gifts and book vacations. Who wear clean clothes, don’t…...
Trumpet Lessons
Now he’s cold and he doesn’t believe it and he’s crying. Later there would be long mornings of playing in the sandbox and a pretty horrible memory that had something to do with a neighbor’s…...
from Everyone Dies, Even the Paddlefish
The new boy with the big ears stood in the cold neon light of the cloakroom, right in the middle of the room, and his school slippers seemed to be stuck to the green linoleum. Take off your pants, Aunt…...
“Survivors,” from “The Ears of the Wolf”
I wake up. The bus stops, and a village full of horses appears. Mama and her women meditator friends and her women communist friends and my sister are on the bus, along with the peasants. We get off, we…...
Shoes
The clamor of children grew more faint. "It's good you came to get me early. Mom always takes forever." "Your mother works late." "Why don't you pick me up every day?" "I had today off. But I'd…...
Do You Suppose It’s the East Wind?
The enormous weight of three hundred and sixty-five days once again slips from my hand and falls down into the dark cavern of the past. The windows in this desolate room are wide open. How improbably strange…...
Profession of Faith
In his final post in this series, Yani Mentzas takes us back to his childhood memories of Tezuka and talks about how public (and private) perceptions of the author's work have evolved over the years. —Editors…...
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