Browse Topics

New Courses

The Tao of Toast: In this workshop, participants will learn to brown toast, butter it, and eat it. A continuation, “What to Do with the Crumbs,” will be offered later this summer.

We Don’t Know What It Is

For a long time I thought: I can live without the walks on the beach, without skiing, hiking, camping. But I wanted our lovemaking to remain sacred, untouchable. I wanted G.’s illness never to intrude in that one place. Of course, I didn’t get my wish.

Lying In Bed, I Think Of Your Hands

The Corner Store

A man in a stained shirt and dirty brown pants stumbles out of a mud-brick building, fiddling with his zipper. Giggling, but sober, he shuts his fly and fishes a cigarette from his breast pocket. Approaching a woman grilling brochettes over a fire, he places a hand on her thigh and swipes a skewer of meat from the grill. The woman doesn’t move or speak, just clucks her tongue disapprovingly.

Keys

Reading the rosary, giving a milagro to celebrate, dipping boxer shorts in a freezing lake

Perry

Perry was just another scrubby desert town tucked behind a minor highway — to us it was a highway; to the state it was a tired dirt road that had been paved in an election year and forgotten.

Grave Love

Bill Pody was our love guru. He drank twelve Pepsis a day, smoked three packs of Marlboros, and occasionally ate — usually a cheeseburger. He was forty-one. He lived in a lime green trailer next to a short, concrete silo. From my farm we could see the silo presiding over Pody’s hill.

What Every Boy Knows

Poor Mortals

Larry couldn’t stop thinking of Mrs. Foster. He thought he must be in love with her. He never raised his hand in any class except hers. The other teachers didn’t seem to care whether he answered questions or not.

Getting Caught

Two wedding crashers, three strikes, four hubcaps