The frogs made a sound like wet pebbles as they hit the old copper roof of his shack; Ibrahim the alte-zachen man sat outside in the shade of the fig tree and watched out over Haifa’s harbour.
Read MoreAll the Wonder in the WorldMaybe I shook them off. I don’t feel them breathing down my neck anymore. I turn around, but I don’t see them in the crowd.
Read MoreAn Evening in the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia on My MindIn her dreams, Jiaotan saw Father: hands outstretched, the flesh of the fingers fraying away to reveal the yellowed, tapered shape of bones, the deep-set eyes bulging in their sockets, pleading, begging her to take him away.
Read MoreAfter the FireWhen Benjamin Schneider came to my clinic and complained of mysterious coils on his left wrist, I wasn’t overly surprised. The term “hypochondriac” may have become overused years ago, but Benjamin nevertheless lived and acted as its perfect archetype.
Read MoreBenjamin Schneider’s Little GreysAt first, she sang to remember. It was a way to pass the long, dark time, a way to drown out the buzz in her head when the earth shook and the bunker rattled, a way to live outside the bars of her cage, to be a woman who smoked and drank, flirted and pined, flipped her pin curls and married a man for his car.
Read MoreA Poor Man’s RosesThe first time he sees the Royal Observatory he is three days shy of his twelfth birthday. It’s spring, a clear night, the stars unveiling themselves in small groups as the sky overhead grows dark.
Read MoreTo Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s LamentMaster told us that the earth was hollow, and that we lived on the inside of it, clinging to the top of the crust. Below us was another world, a world inside the world, a glowing bright sun of a place. What Master called the summerlands.
Read MoreGhost Technology from the SunFive years after her husband died, two years after she moved to a cabin in Montana, and six months after the world ended, Marie opened her curtains to discover her front garden overrun with roving, stumbling advertisements.
Read MoreAdvertising at the End of the WorldThe phone call from Johnny came late that night, after nine, when I’d already decided that the dinner was a bust and was sadly finishing the entire pan of chimichangas.
Read MoreFungal Gardens