To the Scientists Now Losing their Jobs
To the Scientists Now Losing their Jobs: Let us dispense with pleasantries— I know you feel terrible and I’m sorry. There are people who are going to pat...
Embedded
Yanya was unconscious on the floor, breathing but not responding to her name. She had been there for a while. Her friend became concerned and got ahold of...
Sulfur Season
(apologies to Noah Kahan)
it did not win anything in the contest
but i was perhaps undeservedly pleased with it
Terror, Baby
SIDS is ETA
All My Letters Were Written by Ghosts
“What’s that sound? Is that a cat or a baby?” “That’s a baby. Yeah, so I had a baby, in May. Wild, yeah? I have a cat too, but she’s not as loud?” “How was...
Culture Fit
He told me I write well in Spanish and then he recounted an anecdote that suggested I was pronouncing my name incorrectly. I had known I was pregnant for...
The Snail Turbine
The guy actually still had pretty white teeth. My dad mentioned it, and I hadn’t noticed, but he was right. We were doing our best to keep brushing our teeth...
Why it Didn’t Work Out
This Time/Again
Displacement is a State of Mind
We still carried the bills and coins we could lay hands on at the time even though they won’t buy you anything now. For a few months my father kept a small...
Plastic Squid
“So it’s just evolution, ok? Humans dump all this plastic and it ends up in the ocean, and then with like, the sun and storms and waves and all that, the...
The Ides of Tides
Last year on this day when my father turned 70 I called to wish him a happy birthday and he said he was not excited about it. He had just been vaccinated and...
Maren Will Be Right with You
A couple months ago I wouldn’t scoffed at the idea that this could be done but now I believe it, or I am growing towards believing it. We were eking our way...
Recruited
From the things he did you would believe he was out there aggressively knocking on doors and making the world fit his aims, corralling it into his...
Time Dilation and Death
A Critical Analysis of Crucial Factors Involved in Manipulating Variable Time at the Moment of Cessation
Deep Sea
This is Fairly Unpleasant
A Change in Message
My father did not show up the next day. I don’t know why I expected his ghost to be more reliable than his person. I waited by the statue for an hour and a...
A Warning
My husband told one of his jokes, one of his extremely committed puns, a dad joke for a man who would likely never be a dad, if we were to face how things...
You Were Just Here
And Somehow We Missed You
Maybe You Were Completely Wrong
And You’re Just Now Finding Out
Ambition
I was going to write something cunning about ambition but I stayed up late reading the internet. I had an idea for an invention, a new source of energy that...
Fetch the Smelling Salts
I Think I Need to Lie Down
Memorial
I want to build a memorial to you who died in the plague, but I cannot keep a thought in my head and I know nothing about construction. I decided to make a...
Facebook Migratory Patterns
A Horoscope Timeline
Penal Taxonomy
If we didn’t have the photographs people would never believe it. When I was young you could easily tell an orange tree from a grain or a Venus flytrap by...
Rat Tail
They were thoroughly wrung out but the bleeding was slowing, so they decided to meet up with Cathy Gallagher for lunch. Cathy used to run the laundry room...
The Permanent Position
Makin’ it rain like Jimmy and Jackson Workin’ that hustle put in my whole back, son Growin’ up fencin’ up that currency But it don’t even matter, they won’t...
The Genteel Barrenness
Their mother asked sheepishly if they wanted to be involved in Carrie’s shower present or if perhaps they were not into that sort of thing, since, it was...
Txori Txori Txantxangorri
When You Can’t and You Won’t
The Return
They were staring out the airplane window at dark cloudbanks. It was overcast where they were going. They wondered if they couldn’t have a baby because of...
The Bounds of Hearing
I was trying to write something for that Grist contest about imagining climate futures but it seemed altogether too positive and sooo this is what happened...
Delia
They explained their decision to the doctor who came in for a checkup in the afternoon. She made a serious furrow between her eyebrows and paused...
In the Trunk
“I don’t understand.” “I know. I’ll explain it later.” He pushed his chin out a bit like a bulldog. “I don’t get it. Why did we do all of this if you didn’t...
The Normal School
Margaret bent to fork a piece of wood into the open door of the stove with a gloved hand, grunting with the bend in her knees. She pushed it toward the back...
I Resign
They needed a break from the room, some time away from being seen by their partner, the doctor, the impulse to say something, to attend to them. They got a...
Rick and Dee
The woman knelt on a mat and carefully wiped the linoleum with a sponge. She scooted in parallel with the counter, along the line marked in the linoleum...
City Island
This is part 3. Here is part 1. And 2. Some time afterwards they felt well enough to walk around, and besides, they had to pee. They got up and opened the...
Do You Even
I would rather eat a bowl of dog boogers than do a group exercise class. Both my jobs are in a chair though, and to avoid rusting like a tractor in the rain...
Infertility
They were looking away from their partner, who was slumped over his phone, and secretly feeling relief. They didn’t really want one of the potato-looking...
Fertility
They entered the office carefully, holding invisible zones around their stomach, which had been flensed and tenderized as if for a meal, saying oh yes, they...
Harriet Takes on Mr. Boddy in Her New Show, In the Conservatory, With a Knife
We caught up with Harriet (1) as she was enjoying a leisurely moment in her kitchen, where she was languorously enjoying the mid-afternoon sun. After a time...
Squirrels that Spite You
Marginally Correct Advice from Your Stalker
The Wind Betrayed Me
Broke through Pushed up Crushed my knuckles on gritty earth Stood straight never sinking Soaked through with rainy tears Sun-dried to crackling Disdained by...
Sp#¡n is Not in Their Hearts
I can´t recall the exact date the word “Spain” started to sound like a slur. Maybe it was after my husband gave a 45-minute lecture on the Kingdom of Navarre...
Feral
Cats shrank themselves down from tigers to sit on our laps. Feral cats are humanity’s fickle refusal of that irrevocable, diminishing gift. Nobody has to...
The Greatest
I don’t know if it was a personal deficiency or too many books or something about how I was raised, but the things I used to do weren’t just things I did,...
Andy of Small Death
Andrew Hozier-Byrne would never pass out on the floor while visiting a sick neighbor at the hospital, attracting everyone’s attention to the wrong person....
imagine a unifying theme
Welcome to Rook & Raven, a bar for corvids. My previous blog. And the one before it. Subscribe now