Out There

Seth Shostak On The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence

I doubt any aliens we might encounter are going to be biological. I think they’re all going to be machines.

Fighting The Tree

There were too many trees out back, some so high they were dangerous. If one of those passing storms came, the kind that tore off roofs and stripped shingles, a sky-high pine could definitely rip out its roots and crash down on our home.

An Aspect Of Freedom

What is it about a traffic stop and a city block and a sidewalk and a country road and a Bible study and a choir room and a vestibule and a playground and a living room and a bedroom and a bed and a driveway and a highway and a stairwell and a gas station and a suburb and a driver’s seat and a parking lot and a balcony and the door to one’s own home.

Long After

Long after we divorced, long after you died of alcoholism, I still remember that day when I stepped out of the clinic, blinked hard against tears, sank into your VW Bug, pulled the door shut, and whispered, “I’m pregnant.”

Thursdays For Haru

Haru Jenkins’s husband has been abducted at 3:23 AM every Thursday for six years. . . . It should go without saying that aliens abduct him.

Frights

Ellie was a bedroom ghost: a dream-visitant, a gentle levitator, a classic cold-sweat presence-in-the-corner, but she felt under-sung. It’s not like the old days, she told us. They attribute everything I do to Ambien—

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

I Feel Sorry For Aliens

Lonely nights I walk to the old / elevator that used to hold Montana / grain: beams rusted, train tracks / ripped out, a patchwork of missing / roof panels framing perfect squares / of starlight

Vanished

Where do those lost socks / go? The ones that vanish / between washer and dryer, / submerge in suds and never / surface again?