I have only been to the seafood restaurant once since the crabs took over. Waiting at the bar for a table was not the same experience: with the bartender scuttling sideways along the bar top, using leverage and small bottles to spindle the drinks. Do I tip a crab as much as I would a student bartender working her way through college? When we achieved main dining and were seated, I recognized the menu cover but wondered what severe changes awaited inside. But crab was still th

I. A woman sharpens a knife along the bottom of a mug, then pares away the hard brown root beneath an onion. She thinks of when her son first began to toddle and discovered the kitchen. He opened cabinets, banged pots and pans, and played in the basket of alliums. The woman sighs regretfully. Her son had gripped an onion with dimpled hands and handed it to her, then tried to stack one on top of another. He made a mess, scattering shards of onion skin over the kitchen floor.

It doesn’t take any particular talent to get laid Mr. Sayfer proclaims in his unannounced presentation to the 8th grade where we sit...

I read a poem that takes up half the book. There are boys crying in the cornfields of its pages. A living will tucked into the stanzas of...

My room’s view is of a Home Depot at the base of a giant American flag dying violently in the sunset. Perched against more pillows than...

Travelogue I have been to Idaho, but it didn’t leave much of an impression. Unlike Utah, with its starched, bunchy mesas and salt flats....

I befriended a spider mother at work. She lives in a metal door frame. Well, not in the frame, but in a part of the frame where the door...

After I’d moved to New York, I spent a lot of time visiting my downstairs neighbors, Stephane and Michele. The young French couple lived...

Two women lie together against the cold bed, hips and elbows sharp against winter- hardened foam. Hands marked by bedlice, clasping damp...

1. Everything we do—every dance, every yoga practice, every story, every breath—is an offering to the divine—the divinity outside and the...