Reason To Believe

Randall Sullivan on Faith and Evil

Cohen: Do you think part of that evil spirit is found in every human?

Sullivan: I don’t think we’re born with it, but we have receptors that can connect to it, and we decide how much attention we give it, how much we turn toward its allure.

Thievery

I was sure I'd heard our front gate squeal and rattle. We live on a tree-lined Chicago street where 6 AM on Sunday is the time for arriving home from the night shift or heading out to the early shift or, in the case of a very few early risers, walking a dog.

Humomism

In my writing class last Thursday, Cara said it’s a shame that the word humane has human in it, as if only humans had compassion. Then Beth said it’s a problem that human has the word man in it. So we were trying to find another word. Dan suggested “humom.” Because, at our best, we are all like mothers. So maybe that can be the name of our movement: humomism.

Zuma

When you get to your father's bedroom, you see Dad shaking like a freshly fumigated bug. Your brother is by his side on the phone, his face red and sweaty, like when he's been skateboarding all day.

Reincarnation

Maybe they would come back as cats and lie on sunny windowsills, not touching but close enough to hear each other breathing, to recognize the shift in cadence marking the slip into sleep. Maybe he’d lick his paws while she slept—though maybe he wouldn’t be a he and she wouldn’t be a she, and it wouldn’t matter.

Zombie Mom

Denise figured the mom was dead; she had to be. The dad did the shopping now, and unless the mom was traveling for work for, like, a month or something, it was the only explanation.

Point of fact: Just last month the daughter and the mom had been talking while checking out at Denise’s register, and the daughter had asked for Lunchables, and the mom had said, “You will eat those over my dead body.”

Now the dad was buying five of them a week.

A Thousand Words

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

The Loneliest Monk Listens

The first step is to imagine. / No, before that: breathe. Breathe, and know / breath. That’s where it begins.

My Favorite Bird

I prefer the fence-colored bird / who has no song, / or none that he shares with me. // Each day at dusk he stops by to scold me. / Quietly, with a stiff hop. / He seems to know I’ve wasted the day.

Shift

An elderly man prepares broccoli with slivered almonds and lemon juice, his hands shaky. An elderly woman snores and dreams in her cane rocker, Brahms crescendoing on the radio, Wheel of Fortune muted on the television.