"Who said you could have ice cream?" He picks up Johnny and carries him to the porch and squirts him hard with the waterhose. Johnny's skin shakes and turns red and his shoe falls off, he screams but gets quiet when his father covers his mouth and carries him into the house. I pick the dirty sneaker out of a puddle and bring it home. more »

Come on out, now, and let’s talk about this rationally. I know I frightened you. I’m sorry. If you would just open the door and let me explain. Well, in all fairness, I did ask you not to look in… more »

I had, I will admit it only to myself, wanted Cassidy to have a different father. I had wanted Cassidy’s mother not to be a mother. But in my defense, I had also wanted to be the kind of person who didn’t think those things, who didn’t judge. And if all that was not a possibility, I had wanted to participate in the formation of a new world where fathers at least would not have to be out of town so much to buy diapers and have health insurance. more »

Lester ran out after him, still in his slippers and vest, and I followed with flour all over my apron and quilted mitts covering my hands. We ran down the hill past the winter wheat field and threshers at work in the barn, through a cloud of their chaff that made Lester cough, and past three small boys hanging high in a tree while a girl watched them from down below. more »

Sometimes, late at night, when I’m browsing the thousand or more books on the shelves in my father’s study, I can hear them, the books, calling out to me. “Oh! Oh!” they say. “Pick me! Pick me!” And no matter… more »

When the bulldozer was reaching for the wall with his Shah Rukh Khan poster, Nelo made a rush toward it but was held back by his mother. His tiny fingers hadn’t been able to rescue it from the bare brick. They tore it down with one push. more »

This is the smell of prosperity and doom where fat wooden canneries perch on rocks hungry in fog and cold and damp and metal. And when the boats chug in, thudding heavy from squirming weight, the rust pipe organs shriek trills of C sharp, and the workers come down the hills in oil cloth aprons, rubber boots and hair-nets, some wearing lipstick, some in rainbows of kerchiefs, some laughing, some still tired, already numb. For most, this is the street where America begins in calloused hands and... more »

No we won’t. There are all kinds of things to talk about. Like grass. Sometimes it’s bright, liquid green, sometimes it’s brown, sometimes it’s patchy. Sometimes it’s really soft and cool, sometimes it’s bristly. When it’s dry it hurts your feet when you walk on it barefoot. Is that crabgrass? more »

Don’t save your jealousy for too long, for it will turn yellow with time, like old piss, and begin to produce heat and grow gaseous. Jealousy will develop a smell, a sweet, odiferous, bacterial scent that will leak through the tightest container. You cannot contain it in anything, even a mason jar with a new canning lid ratcheted on tight. more »

We met at this bar called The Stork and Clover. It’s supposed to make you feel lucky to be a family man. They brew beer there. It used to be a lighthouse, until they started pasteurizing. Now it’s a lighthouse and a brewery. We… more »