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.

Translators’ Note: the words in italics are in English in the original. Zugló is a suburb of Budapest. She was standing by the philodendron, watching the apparatus make one last click. For days she thought that the sound came from the plant. These days they come up with so many new things. Would she have been really this naïve? That was also Jack's fault, like many other things. I wonder when he'll figure out that this thingamajig has croaked; perhaps he'll notice it as soo

I wrote a poem about my mother—more specifically, about the chasm between us, and my futile attempts to connect with her. My writing group said it was too short. They wanted me to fill the empty spaces, expand the emotions, include more sensory detail. I wanted to bang my head on the table. It wasn’t about the specific sharp words we’d used, or the way my hands felt washing the dishes as we argued. It was about the effort. The many efforts. About building a bridge as far as I

Breath and Remedy Well-wishes at the opening of the day. Good, have a good.. .have you any sugar, please. Pleas to the sky, the god. Wishes on an eyelash, the train-track, the clover, the clock saying 11:11. I am plural, I am they, since 2009, no singular, here. Someday we women may stop apologizing. Such a comfortable land: the geography of an apology. That dip, there, topographic lines of green and blue. The realization that you may have taken someone’s time or comfort, or

He was good at tracing things believed lost. Once he found a child. Scarfing hamburgers with workmates perving on lunchbreak girls among the flow of shoppers outside a crowded mall, their sarcastic scores out of ten for sexiness were interrupted when a frantic mother blundered by. Slipping from their land rover he asked quick pertinent questions then directed his trailing mates to search in different directions. After footing it fluidly through the pack inside he triumpha

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...

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Anita Diaz, paralegal at Dan Newsome’s law offices in Alpine, Texas, knew when she heard her cellphone buzz that the news would not be...

The New York winter chill disappeared when Jean entered the lobby of Maxine Elliott’s Theater, crowded with women. It was Jean’s fourth...