Calendar of Regrets (an excerpt)

Fiction

Hieronymus Bosch dabs paintbrush to palette and confers with the small round convex mirror floating alone in an ocean of bonewhite wall on the far side of his studio. Sharpness of eye, thinness of lip, satirical rage, he thinks: his whole family of attributes, God willing, will be out of this mess soon enough.

overly Dramatic portrait of a walk

Fiction

The corner at West 10th Street and Sixth Avenue slopes at an obtuse angle. The City lamp post, built to illuminate, arrogantly points a long green finger—a standard street sign—uptown, informing those who are interested enough, or those who merely happen to take notice, that this is the Avenue of the Americas.

The Moment

Fiction

The moment. In which the thing erupts is the moment in which uncertainty gapes. After all the certainty which came before. Where there was no room for faltering and no room for considerations because all considerations were already made.

Affair

Fiction

It had been going on. There was no talk of ending it, but she was leaving in the morning. Rainy, sitting in the cold car on the cold road and the lights of the houses blinking on and off like morse code.

The Time of the Darkest Color

Fiction

I had a friend when I was young. After childhood and before the rest of it: suspended, still.

The Accidental Oracle

Fiction

Dear Oracle:

We let a drifter do some yard work and sleep in the metal shed out back for a few nights – and now we can’t get rid of him! If we give him money, he spends it all on alcohol, and the nicer we are to him, the worse he gets.