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Brasalina

I was seven years old and had just started summer vacation when I learned that my brand-new grandmother from New York City was coming to stay with us for a week or two, “to meet her new family.” Brasalina, a half-black, half-Indian Brazilian woman of twenty-one, had just married my grandfather, my father’s father, who was eighty-three and too ill to come with her on this visit.

Playing With Fire

Sexual fantasies, Kristallnacht, chemists

Steeplechase

Evenings, the boardwalk was crowded with refugees from the hot city. Neon blazed, and loud music exploded from every arcade. The aroma of hot dogs, hamburgers, beer, and knishes mingled with the salt-scented breeze. It was the first time I’d known the expansive luxury of the open sky curving to the horizon.

Lessons From Basra

I work in the library of a low-income public school. I can see the kids are interested in war. The boys check out all the books about World War I, World War II, weapons, spies, codes, guns, castles, and knights. Boys without fathers are especially interested in combat.

Games

A Froot Loops message board, bicycle soccer, the MIT blackjack team

Flight

Saturday Night

Druid (reformed), bath night, the laundromat

Four Mandalas For My Father

My father used to tuck me in at night. It was a ritual I looked forward to throughout my childhood and even into adolescence, when my father became slightly repulsive to me — what with the errant hairs protruding from his nose and ears, and the smacking noise he made while eating.

On Terror

She tries to catch her breath, takes tissue after tissue from my box. I give her a glass of water, and we do some deep-breathing exercises. I tell her to go slowly. I assure her that the past is over, although I know it is a lie. The past is alive. It is with us every moment, our lives slim transparencies between past and present.