Novels by Wioletta Greg and Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, and three poems from The Southern Review

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A christening shawl decorated with periwinkle and yellowed asparagus fern hung in the window of our stone house for nearly two years.  It tempted me with a little rose tucked in its folds, and I would have used it as a blanket for my dolls, but my mother wouldn't let me go near it.
        "Don't touch the shawl, Loletka.  It's a memento.  We'll take it down when your dad comes back," she'd say.  And when her friend who lived nearby would pop in "for a moment"—meaning two hours—she would repeat the story of how, a month after my father was arrested for deserting from the army and two weeks before her baby was due, she received a summons to start a work placement at Cem-Build.  Together with a dozen other women, she had to make paving slabs as part of the new five-year plan, so that the district government could create new squares in front of office buildings, schools and health centres within the allotted time.  In the end, Mum couldn't take working outside in the freezing weather.  She hid behind a cement mixer, and when her waters broke into a bucket full of lime they drove her to the maternity ward.
        She brought me home in February.  Still bleeding after childbirth, she lay down on the bed, unwrapped my blanket, which reeked of mucus and urine, rubbed the stump of my umbilical cord with gentian violet, tied a red ribbon around my wrist to ward off evil spells and fell asleep for a few hours.  It was the sort of sleep during which a person decides whether to depart or to turn back.
--From Swallowing Mercury, a novel by Wioletta Grzegorzewska (writing as Wioletta Greg), translated from the Polish by Eliza Marciniak (Transit Books, 2017).  Originally published as Guguły, which means "unripe fruit" according to the translator's note at the end of the book (Wydawnictwo Czarne: Wołowcu, Poland, 2014).

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.  
--From "Gift," a poem written and translated from Polish to English by Czeslaw Milosz, reprinted in "Regarding Happiness," an essay by Charles Baxter, The Southern Review, Volume 44:2 (Spring 2008), p. 248.

My old man rings me on my cell.  The garbage can is beside the road
and needs to be rolled back into the carport.  
--From "My Father's Garbage Can," a poem by David Bottoms, The Southern Review, Volume 44:2 (Spring 2008), p. 220.

Water opens without end
At the bow of the ship
--From "Voyage," a poem by Samuel Menashe, reprinted in "No Small Feat" by Robin Ekiss, a review of Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems (edited by Christopher Ricks), The Southern Review, Volume 44:2 (Spring 2008), p. 365.

On my way down Skothúsvegur I reflect on how one should go about borrowing a hunting rifle from a neighbour.  Does one borrow a weapon the same way one borrows a hose extension?  What animals are hunted at the beginning of May?  One can't shoot the messenger of spring, the golden plover, who has just returned to the island, or a duck hatching from an egg.  Could I say that I want to shoot a great black-backed gull that keeps me awake in the attic apartment of a residential block in the city centre?  Wouldn't Svanur find it suspicious if I were to suddenly turn into a spokesman for ducklings' rights?  Besides, Svanur knows that I'm no hunter.  
--From Hotel Silence, a novel by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, translated from the Icelandic by Brian FitzGibbon (Black Cat/Grove Atlantic, 2018).  Published by arrangement with Éditions Zulma, Paris, France.  Originally published as Ör (Scars) (Benedikt Bókaútgáfa: Reykjavík, Iceland, 2016).

Fiction by Alina Bronsky, Jean Thompson, and Ann Patchett, and two poems about fire

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I'm awoken in the night again by Marja's rooster, Konstantin.  He's like an ersatz husband for Marja.  She raised him, and she pampered and spoiled him even as a chick; now he's full-grown and good for nothing.  Struts around the yard imperiously and leers at me.  His internal clock is messed up, always has been, though I don't think it has anything to do with the radiation.  You can't blame the radiation for every stupid thing in the world.  
--From Baba Dunja's Last Love, a novel by Alina Bronsky, translated from the German by Tim Mohr (Europa Editions, 2016).  Originally published as Baba Dunjas letzte Liebe (Kiepenheuer & Witsch: Köln, Germany, 2015).

My father came home from the war to a household of girls and women.  There was me, my mother, and my sister Carol, born while he was away.  This was 1967, which was early to be coming back from Vietnam.  More people were going there than returning, as is the case in any war.  And the great acceleration, the downhill plunge, was just beginning.  You have to remember none of us knew how anything would turn out.  
--From Who Do You Love, a collection of short stories by Jean Thompson (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1999).  It was published in paperback in 2000 by Simon & Schuster.  This excerpt is from "The Amish," a short story which was first published in American Short Fiction.

I was looking at a poster for Midnight Alarm when the first
        minivan blew up.  Ten minutes after the second explosion
        we heard the sirens, and I knew they didn't sound
the same as in the Garden in 1950, alerting firefighters
        laid out on cots as if asleep to rise and dowse a scaffolding 
        structure painted like a tenement or brownstone.
--From "Fire in the Streets," a poem by Gavin Adair, Mid-American Review, Volume 27, Number 1 (Fall 2006), p. 125.

. . .  Love's insects land on your arm 
& draw a little blood.  Instinctively, you squash them with your palm.
Amazing the seasonal shifts we permit ourselves: It seemed lucky 
when our apartment burned.  My father circumvented the superintendent 
& illegally installed a new invention: the air conditioner, overloading vintage wiring.

Next scene: a thousand people in exile, clutching (what would be the one
possession you'd snatch in a panic?), & we all watched, hypnotized by flames, 
like a scene from a '50s Godzilla movie, the lives of families transformed by my father's
desire for a comfortable summer. . . . 
--From "Unitarian Birds," a poem by Bruce Cohen, Mid-American Review, Volume 28 (Fall 2007), pp. 60-61.

The first time our father brought Andrea to the Dutch House, Sandy, our housekeeper, came to my sister's room and told us to come downstairs.  "Your father has a friend he wants you to meet," she said.
--From The Dutch House, a novel by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 2019). 

The Fall 2019 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Fall 2019 issue of the Apple Valley Review features short fiction by Tim Fitts, Richard Ward, Mary Grimm, and Casey Forest; a prose poem by Lisa Zimmerman; poetry by Richard Brostoff, Amy Schmitz, Barbara Daniels, Katherine Fallon, Lisa Zimmerman, Renee Emerson, Alfonsina Storni (translated from the Spanish by Thomas Feeny), Gary Duehr, Richard Spilman, and Joseph Chaney; and a cover painting by Dutch artist Cornelis Vreedenburgh.

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal. The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com.

Novels by Roy Jacobsen and Hye-young Pyun, stories by Dorthe Nors, and a poem by Marjorie Lotfi Gill

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In the wake of the two disasters there followed yet another, this time connected with a widow's pension; you see, my father managed to get hitched again before he fell to his death, and to have another child, a girl, whose name we did not even know, so that now there was another widow somewhere out there, receiving the money that Mother and I should have had, and squandering it on the pools and taxis and perms.
--From Child Wonder, a novel by Roy Jacobsen, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett with Don Shaw (Maclehose Press/Quercus: London, Great Britain, 2011).  Originally published in Norwegian as Vidunderbarn (Prodigy) (Cappelen Damm: Oslo, Norway, 2009).

Ask me for the measure of rose water
in baklava, how to butter each layer of filo
away from the corner so it holds itself apart
under heat, or the exact crush of pistachio,
fine as rubble, not yet dust.
--From "The Wrong Person to Ask," a poem by Marjorie Lotfi Gill, Rattle (May 15, 2018).

After a while, the nurse came back.  She unplugged a number of cords that connected Oghi to the machines, then double-checked the bed and slowly wheeled him out into the hallway.  
        Oghi lay there and watched as the hospital ceiling and fluorescent lights rushed past.  He had a feeling he would be in that bed for a while.  Not just a few hours but for days to come.  All this talk about the importance of willpower must have meant that, unless he wanted it badly enough, he would have a tough time getting better.  It meant there was absolutely no chance his body would mend on its own, that even repeated treatment would not guarantee recovery.  The doctor's and nurse's reactions told Oghi that he'd taken a long time to wake up.  He'd probably received all sorts of medical care already.  The cables, the respirator, the tubes snaking in and out of him told him that his had not been an easy fight.
--From The Hole, a novel by Hye-young Pyun, translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell (Arcade Publishing, 2017).  Originally published in Korean as Hol (Moonji Publishing: Seoul, South Korea, 2016).

The Bangs work a lot and never shop for groceries themselves.  Everything in the refrigerator is ordered online.  Every Sunday evening they place their order.  Every Monday a box is left outside the door with all their food.  One of these Mondays the box contains a tomato weighing more than four pounds, which the Bangs do not believe they ordered.  The first thing is that they cannot possibly eat a tomato that big.  The other thing is that they are paying by the ounce.  It's too expensive, says Mrs. Bang, so Mr. Bang calls the online grocery store to complain.  At seven that evening, while I am busy in the guest bathroom, the doorbell rings.  
--From "The Big Tomato," a short story by Dorthe Nors, from her collection Karate Chop, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken (Graywolf Press, 2014), pp. 23-28.

For smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee with the hairstylist I get my hair done for half price.  Once in a while, a fat lady who lives in our building walks by on the street outside.  She has permission to keep a dog in her apartment, because her dog can't bark.  
--From "Hair Salon," a short story by Dorthe Nors, from her collection Karate Chop, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken (Graywolf Press, 2014), pp. 51-54.  "Hair Salon" was first published in Gulf Coast, Issue 24.1 (Winter/Spring 2012).

Short stories by Susan Perabo and poems by Jeanne-Marie Osterman and Catherine Barnett

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Katy's mother was a real piece of work.  She lived like a hermit in a crappy little apartment in Newark, listening to talk radio and working crossword puzzles and--from what I could tell--just waiting to keel over dead. . . .  She only spoke when asked a direct question, and her answers were always polite and indifferent and short, like she was being interviewed for a job she didn't really want; she looked right through Katy like a pane of glass. 
--From "Counting the Ways," a short story by Susan Perabo.  It was published in her collection Who I Was Supposed to Be (Simon & Schuster, 1999), pp. 35-51.

He awoke Christmas morning to find a tall, frowning doctor standing over him.  Three of his ribs were cracked, and his nose was broken.  His cheeks ached and his ears tingled.  He lifted his arm and read the plastic band that circled his wrist.  John Doe, it read. 
--From "Reconstruction," a short story by Susan Perabo.  It was published in her collection Who I Was Supposed to Be (Simon & Schuster, 1999), pp. 83-102.

I was twelve the summer I watched four men beat up my father on a softball field at his company picnic.  
--From "Who I Was Supposed to Be," a short story by Susan Perabo.  It was first published in Black Warrior Review, 21.1 (Fall/Winter 1994), and later included in her collection Who I Was Supposed to Be (Simon & Schuster, 1999), pp. 103-117.


I walk to the cafeteria carrying my
      clipboard with Medicaid application and notes

for Washington State Human Services
     I'm mistaken for a social worker 

by a man in a wheelchair whose wife
     is dying down the hall.
--From "Any Fool Can," a poem by Jeanne-Marie Osterman, 45th Parallel, Issue 4.


A doctor suggested I spend four minutes a day asking questions about whatever matters most to me.

Four minutes, that's how long it takes to boil an egg, get from 96th to 42nd on the express train, initiate an irreversible apocalypse. 

     ---

How do I get out of here? is the question my father asks most frequently.  It takes him three of four seconds to say the seven syllables, there are frequent glitches in his speech but it's a perfect mantra.

What next? and Jackie? are his other inquiries.

Jackie what next Jackie what next Jackie--

If you count repetitions, they add up to at least four minutes.

--From Human Hours, a collection of poems by Catherine Barnett (Graywolf Press, 2018).  This segment is from "Accursed Questions, i" (pp. 23-26).  The poem that led me to this book, "Essay on 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,'" appeared in The New Yorker on March 19, 2018 (pp. 52-53).  "Essay" is on pages 32-33 of Human Hours.

Fiction by Dorthe Nors, Etgar Keret, and Lydia Davis

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Sonja is sitting in a car, and she's brought her dictionary along.  It's heavy, and sits in the bag on the backseat.  She's halfway through her translation of Gösta Svensson's latest crime novel, and the quality was already dipping with the previous one.  Now's the time I can afford it, she thought, and so she looked for driving schools online and signed up with Folke in Frederiksburg.  The theory classroom was small and blue and reeked of stale smoke and locker rooms, but the theory itself went well.  Besides Folke, there was only one other person Sonja's age in the class, and he was there because of drunk driving, so he kept to himself.  Sonja usually sat there and stuck out among all the kids, and for the first aid unit the instructor used her as a model.  He pointed to the spot on her throat where they were supposed to imagine her breathing had gotten blocked.  He did the Heimlich on her, his fingers up in her face, inside her collar, up and down her arms.  At one point he put her into a stranglehold, but that wasn't the worst of it.  The worst was when they had to do the exercises themselves.  It was humiliating to be placed in the recovery position by a boy of eighteen.  
--From Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, a novel by Dorthe Nors, translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra (Graywolf Press, 2018).  Originally published as Spejl, skulder, blink (Gyldendal: Copenhagen, Denmark, 2016).  First published in English by Pushkin Press, London.

"What did you buy it for?"
"Because I need it," she said.  "A lot of things around here need gluing."
"Nothing around here needs gluing," I said. "I wish I understood why you buy all this stuff."
"For the same reason I married you," she murmured. "To help pass the time."
I didn't want to fight, so I kept quiet, and so did she.
--From "Crazy Glue," a very short story by Etgar Keret, LA Weekly (September 26, 2001).  It was published in his collection The Girl on the Fridge (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), pp. 5-7.  "Crazy Glue" was translated from the Hebrew by Miriam Shlesinger.

In the summer of '76, they remodeled our house and added another bathroom.  That was my mother's private bathroom, with green tiles, white curtains, and a kind of small drawing board she could put on her knees to do crossword puzzles on.  The door of this new bathroom had no lock because it was my mother's and no one else was allowed to go in anyway.  We were very happy that summer. 
--From "The Summer of '76," a very short story by Etgar Keret, from his collection The Girl on the Fridge (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), pp. 169-171.  "The Summer of '76" was translated from the Hebrew by Sondra Silverston.

Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly.  She cries out, “Emergency, emergency,” and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed.  We know she is making it up; nothing has really happened to her. 

--From "Fear," one of five very short stories by Lydia Davis, Conjunctions, Issue 24 (Spring 1995).

Minna spends her days in the Royal Library. 
Minna has to work without noise.
Minna's working on a paper sonata.
The paper sonata consists of tonal rows.
Minna writes soundless music.
Minna is a tad avant-garde.
...
It's morning.
Lars has left again.
Lars is always in a hurry to get out of bed.
The bed is a snug nest.
Minna's lying in it, but
Lars is on his bike and gone.
Lars bikes as hard as he can in the direction of City Hall Square.
Lars makes the pigeons rise.
Lars has deadlines.
--From Minna Needs Rehearsal Space, a novella by Dorthe Nors, from her book So Much for That Winter, translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra (Graywolf Press, 2016).  Part of Minna Needs Rehearsal Space (Minna mangler et øvelokale) was published in English and Danish by Asymptote.

Fiction and poetry by Domenico Starnone, Sayaka Murata, Mary White, and more

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One evening Betta called, crankier than usual, wanting to know if I felt up to minding her son while she and her husband took part in a mathematics conference in Cagliari.  I'd been living in Milan for a couple of decades, and the thought of decamping to Naples, to the old house I'd inherited from my parents, and where my daughter had been living since prior to getting married, didn't thrill me.  I was over seventy and, having been a widower for some time, had lost the habit of living with others.  I only felt comfortable in my own bed and in my own bathroom.  Furthermore, I'd undergone, a few weeks earlier, a small surgical procedure which, even in the clinic, seemed to have done more harm than good.  Though the doctors poked their faces day and night into my room, to tell me that everything had gone fine, my hemoglobin was low, my ferritin was poor, and one afternoon, I saw small heads, plaster-white, stretching toward me from the opposite wall.
--From Trick, a novel by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri (Europa Editions, 2018). Originally published in Italian as Scherzetto (Einaudi: Torino, Italy, 2016).

The morning period is passing normally in the brightly lit box of the convenience store, I feel.  Visible outside the windows, polished free of fingerprints, are the figures of people rushing by.  It is the start of another day, the time when the world wakes up and the cogs of society begin to move.  I am one of those cogs, going round and round.  I have become a functioning part of the world, rotating in the time of day called morning.
--From Convenience Store Woman, a novel by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Grove Press, 2018).  Originally published in Japanese as Konbini ningen (Tokyo, Japan: Bungeishunjū Ltd., 2016). 

When my fiancé left for the war 
Which is still going on 
I prepared increasingly elaborate foods
--From "Expectation Management," a poem by Mary White, Communion Arts Journal (June 2019).

Like, he's definitely cheating.  He's not even trying to hide it anymore.  He's such a piece of shit.  Take a left here.  And the worst part is she's not going to say anything either.  I mean, she's basically just waiting for him to leave her.  It's honestly stressful just being in the same room as them.
--From Bottled, a graphic novel by Chris Gooch (Top Shelf Productions, 2017). 

I didn't belong there.  I wandered through the succession of rooms, with a glass of overly acidic champagne in my hand.  I looked at the other guests.  Their self-confidence, the way they held their heads.  Their facial expressions.  They formed familiar little clusters, burst out laughing, glanced over at rival groups, occasionally glanced at the canvases, gushed noisily, turned away, murmured a spicy anecdote or scathing commentary into the ear of an acolyte, demolishing the opus they had just praised in the blink of an eye.  
--From Exposed, a novel by Jean-Philippe Blondel, translated from the French by Alison Anderson (New Vessel Press, 2019).  Originally published in French as La mise à nu (Libella: Paris, France, 2018).

Living alone in his dead uncle's cottage, and with the burden lately of wandering thoughts in the night, Seamus Ferris had fallen hard for a Polish girl who worked at a café down in Carrick.  He had himself almost convinced that the situation had the dimensions of a love affair, though in fact he'd exchanged no more than a few dozen words with her, whenever she named the price for his flat white and scone, and he shyly paid it, offering a line or two himself on the busyness of the town or the fineness of the weather.
--From "The Coast of Leitrim," a short story by Kevin Barry, The New Yorker (October 15, 2018), pp. 70-75.

Flash fiction by Ron Nyren and Francine Witte, and several poems about stories

~
The summer of no breeze, six men carried an enormous fan up the stairs of my grandmother's four-story townhouse and installed it in the roof.
--From "Vertical Travel," a story by Ron Nyren, 100 Word Story (April 24, 2019).

Six months gone, but it's still my sister's birthday, and so we buy a cake.
--From "Candle," a story by Francine Witte, Fourth & Sycamore (August 15, 2018).

Halfway through the sentence
she fell asleep.  She had been telling 
some sort of fable concerning
a young girl who wakens one morning
as a bird.
--From "An Endless Story," a poem by Louise Glück, The Threepenny Review (Summer 2018).

You chase me through a cornfield
and we arrive in a clearing.  All
that we know and do not know
shimmers between us, an invisible
door with no way to open or close.
--From "Bringing in the Sheaves," a poem by Donna Vorreyer, from her poetry collection Every Love Story Is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016), p. 15.  A different version of this poem was first published in the Apple Valley Review (Fall 2012) and later reprinted in the 2014 edition of New Poetry from the Midwest (New American Press).

dark, the better for sleeping, brown like my eyes, 
you said, (may we all find that one person who will
compare our eyes to Ralph Lauren paint colors
instead of noticing the chipped polish on our left
foot) but my eyes aren't brown at all, . . .  
--From "We are painting the bedroom," a poem by Donna Vorreyer, from her poetry collection Every Love Story Is an Apocalypse Story (Sundress Publications, 2016), p. 64.

He's a happy baby.  How old is he?
I ask the woman who is reading a magazine 
and seems to have forgotten 
the baby at my feet.  She looks up and I watch 
her mind chew through my question.  
Seven months maybe.  Or eight, she says
then adds, He isn't my baby.
--From "Baby Facing the Wrong Way in the County Jail," a poem by Nancy Miller Gomez, from her chapbook of poetry and short essays, Punishment (Rattle, 2018), p. 22.

Fiction by Joseph O'Neill, Ottessa Moshfegh, Lily King, and Martin Suter

~
The cat looked nothing like Buster.  It didn't even look like a cat.  The vet offered some clearly dishonest and meaningless statistics about the thing's chance of recovery.  She also referred to the expense of keeping it alive.  Martha held Robert's hand as he listened to all of this.  When she understood that Robert could not speak, she took it upon herself to ask the vet the necessary questions.  When the vet again said, The operation was a complete success, Martha said, you know what?  We'd appreciate it if you stopped saying that. 
        The next morning, nothing had changed.  The plug was pulled on Buster.  There were various options with regard to the remains.  Robert decided on the gratis option, namely the garbage.  Buster was garbage at this point.  Over the next few days, handwritten condolence cards arrived from vets.  Bills, too.
--From Good Trouble, a collection of short stories by Joseph O'Neill (Pantheon Books, 2018).  This segment is from "Goose" (pp. 118-131 in hardcover).  The collection also includes stories which first appeared in The New Yorker (e.g., "The Poltroon Husband" and "The Sinking of the Houston") and Harper's Magazine (e.g., "The Trusted Traveler"). 

Whenever I woke up, night or day, I'd shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed.  I'd get two large coffees with cream and six sugars each, chug the first one in the elevator on the way back up to my apartment, then sip the second one slowly while I watched movies and ate animal crackers and took trazodone and Ambien and Nembutal until I fell asleep again.  I lost track of time in this way.  Days passed.  Weeks.  A few months went by. 
--From My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a novel by Ottessa Moshfegh (Penguin Press, 2018).

The summer of 1986, the summer I was fourteen, my parents went to the Dordogne for eight weeks.  My father had been unwell, and it was thought that France, where he had studied as a young man, would enable his recovery.  Through the university’s employment office, my mother hired two sophomores to house-sit for the time they would be out of the country.  As I came with the house, these two college boys were obliged to take care of me, too.
--From "When in the Dordogne," a short story by Lily King, One Story, Issue 212 (October 26, 2015).

No sooner had the barman served him his martini than a woman entered the bar, put her coat and handbag on the bar stool beside Weynfeldt, sat on the next one over and ordered a gin fizz.  She was wearing a green silk Chinese blouse, white arms extending from its short, close sleeves, a tight black skirt and high heels a similar shade of green to the blouse.  Her long red hair was tied up, secured with an imitation tortoiseshell clasp to free her neck, which the blouse's high collar circled loosely.  
--From The Last Weynfeldt, a novel by Martin Suter, translated from the German by Steph Morris (New Vessel Press, 2016).  Originally published in German as Der letzte Weynfeldt (Diogenes Verlag: Zürich, Switzerland, 2008).

In an odd coincidence, the cover design and one of the major plot lines of the book feature Femme nue devant une salamandre (Nude Facing a Stove), a painting by Félix Vallotton.

I published the Spring 2019 issue of the Apple Valley Review in April 2019, and I picked up and started reading The Last Weynfeldt earlier this month (May 2019).  The cover art for AVR's spring issue, which I selected well before reading the book, was Intimité (Intimacy), a painting by Félix Vallotton.  There are times when everything seems interconnected. . . .

Fiction and poetry by Ottessa Moshfegh, Jennifer Kronovet, Domenico Starnone, and more

~
My classroom was on the first floor, next to the nuns' lounge.  I used their bathroom to puke in the mornings.  
--From Homesick for Another World, a collection of short stories by Ottessa Moshfegh (Penguin, 2017).  These lines are from the story "Bettering Myself," which first appeared in The Paris Review. 
 
My husband had warned me about the cameras before we moved to Guangzhou, saying that there would or wouldn’t be video cameras hidden all over our apartment and that someone in the Chinese government would or wouldn’t be watching us at all times.  He told me that there was no point in having a password on my computer because the cameras would see what was on my computer screen.  That’s how good the cameras that did or did not exist were.
--From "The Cameras," a short story by Jennifer Kronovet, Bennington Review, Issue 6.

Today they are talking on the radio about 

how to remember your infant, . . . 

--From "Lost Body," a poem by Jordan Rice, The New York Times Magazine (February 10, 2017).  "Lost Body" is from Constellarium, Jordan Rice's debut collection of poems (Orison Books, 2016).

In case it's slipped your mind, Dear Sir, let me remind you: I am your wife.  I know that this once pleased you and that now, suddenly, it chafes.  I know you pretend that I don't exist, and that I never existed, because you don't want to look bad in front of the highbrow people you frequent.  I know that leading an orderly life, having to come home in time for dinner, sleeping with me instead of with whomever you want, makes you feel like an idiot.

--From Ties, a novel by Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri (Europa Editions, 2016).  Originally published in Italian as Lacci (Laces) (Einaudi: Torino, Italy, 2014).

That was the summer it rained and rained.  I remember the sad doggish smell of my sweater and my shoes sloshing crazily.  And in every city, the same scene.  A boy stepping into the street and opening an umbrella for a girl keeping dry in the doorway.  
--From Dept. of Speculation, a novel by Jenny Offill (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).

Hélène could not remember having ever experienced a perfect moment.  When she was little, she often surprised her parents with her behavior--constantly tidying her room, changing her clothes the moment there was the slightest spot on them, braiding her hair over and over until she obtained an impeccable symmetry; she shuddered with horror when they took her to see Swan Lake because she alone noticed that there was a lack of rigor in the alignment of the dancers, that their tutus did not all drop down together, and that every time there was a ballerina--never the same one--who disrupted the harmony of the movement.

--From The Most Beautiful Book in the World, a collection of short stories by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, translated from the French by Alison Anderson (Europa Editions, 2009).  Originally published in French as Odette Toulemonde et autres histoires (Odette Toulemonde and other stories) (Éditions Albin Michel: Paris, France, 2006).  These lines are from the story "A Fine Rainy Day." 

A little poetry for Spring 2019 and Poetry Month

~
garden party

Not what you might think: not tea & cakes & ices.
Just the neighbors, come to clean the yard,
taking rakes & clippers to dead leaves & bracken,
piling debris on tarps to drag out to the brush heap.
My sister falls asleep reading on the daybed.
Three hours later, the yard’s raked clear.
A shower comes, an almost double rainbow.
We watch it fade, admiring the neatness
of the flower beds, the rain-rinsed brightness
of the lawn.  Just then the woodchuck slithers up
from his burrow, starts chewing iris blades.
My sister raps on the window.  He looks up,
stares, chews more.  She raps again, harder,
& as he scoots off, we call out, laughing,
Your days are numbered, pal!  Ours, too.
But first, this green, this flowering.

—From “After My Sister's Mastectomy,” a four-part poem by Lynne Knight. Read the full poem in the Spring 2019 issue of the Apple Valley Review (Volume 14, Number 1). https://www.applevalleyreview.com

https://www.leahbrowning.net/Apple/Spring_2019/Lynne_Knight.html

The Spring 2019 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Spring 2019 issue of the Apple Valley Review features short fiction by Jeff Ewing and Jeff Moreland; poetry by Mark Belair, Gail Peck, Doug Ramspeck, Eric Vithalani, Idris Anderson, Christopher Todd Anderson, Richard Jones, Sue Chenette, Lynne Knight, and Matthew Murrey; and cover artwork by Félix Vallotton.  

The Apple Valley Review is a semiannual online literary journal.  The current issue, previous issues, subscription information, and complete submission guidelines are available at www.applevalleyreview.com. 

Work by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Dan Chiasson, Ruth Reichl, Roz Chast, and more

Once there was a patient in the hospital who was still feeling rather poorly, especially at night.  Part of the problem was a conversation he kept hearing through the wall, day and night.  
--From Through the Wall, a tiny book containing five stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, translated from the Russian by Anna Summers and Keith Gessen (Penguin, 2011).  Three of the stories published in this Mini Modern Classic were first published in English in book form in There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby (Penguin, 2009).  The remaining two stories were published for the first time in English in this collection.  Through the Wall might be a little difficult to find in the U.S.; I was lucky enough to find a used copy at Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon. 

Out late and the night is a ruin, my voice says
the night is a ruin, my voice doesn’t say a thing,
my poem says my voice doesn’t say a thing, . . . 

--From "Tulip Tree," a poem by Dan Chiasson.  Knopf included it in their Poem-a-Day mailing for National Poetry Month on April 12, 2019.  "Tulip Tree" was published in Natural History, a collection of poetry by Dan Chiasson (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007).

Most mornings I got out of bed and went to the refrigerator to see how my mother was feeling.  You could tell instantly just by opening the door.  One day in 1960 I found a whole suckling pig staring at me.  I jumped back and slammed the door, hard.  

--From Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table, a memoir by Ruth Reichl (Broadway Books/Random House, 1998). 

My mother's name was Miriam, but most people called her Mim. . . .  I've got Mim Tales by the dozen, and I've used them for years to entertain my friends.  As a writer I've always known how lucky I was to have so much material, and my first book opened with Mom accidentally poisoning a couple of dozen people at a party.  After the book was published people kept asking, "Did she really do those things?"

--From For You Mom, Finally (previously published in hardcover as Not Becoming My Mother), a memoir by Ruth Reichl (Penguin, 2010).

A Note on the Author [Me, age 9, lying in bed reading The Big Book of Horrible Rare Diseases] 

--From Theories of Everything, an enormous collection of cartoons by Roz Chast from 1978 to 2006 (Bloomsbury, 2006).  

A quick side note: 

I don't typically mention book tours because they have a relatively short life span, but Roz Chast is currently on tour with Patricia Marx for their book Why Don't You Write My Eulogy Now So I Can Correct It? A Mother's Suggestions (Celadon Books, 2019).  Attend an event if you have the opportunity; they are good friends and very entertaining.  (I'd also recommend seeing Ruth Reichl if you can; she is on tour to promote Save Me the Plums.)     

Our friend came over the other night.  He and his terrible girlfriend had finally broken up.  This was his third breakup with that particular girlfriend, but he insisted it was going to be the one to stick.  He paced around our kitchen, working his way through the ten thousand petty humiliations and torments of their six-month relationship, while we cooed and fretted and bent our faces into sympathetic shapes in his direction.  When he went to the bathroom to collect himself, we collapsed against each other, rolling our eyes and pretending to strangle ourselves and shoot ourselves in the head.  
--From You Know You Want This: "Cat Person" and Other Stories, a collection of short stories by Kristen Roupenian (Scout Press, 2019).  This selection is from "Bad Boy," which first appeared in Body Parts Magazine.   

Poetry and nonfiction from The New Yorker, and books by Per Petterson and Milena Michiko Flašar

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A car's tires thu-thunk

over the rubbery black trip wire at the oil change, 

triggering a fat bell, 

and a group of girls in silver leotards are reflected 

like spatters of sap in its windows--

--From "Strawberries," a poem by Gabrielle Bates, The New Yorker (June 4 & 11, 2018), p. 57.

In California, my mom worked an entry-level job at what now might be called a Silicon Valley tech business.  It made audiocassettes.  My dad made peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and popcorn.  He picked me up from preschool, strapping me into the yellow child seat mounted at the back of his bike.    
--From "What Is Possible," a short piece on parenting by Mohsin Hamid, The New Yorker (June 4 & 11, 2018), p. 71.

In the park he was the only salaryman.  In the park I was the only hikikomori. Something was not quite right with us.  He should really be in his office, in one of the high-rises, I should stick to my room, within four walls.  We should not be here, or at least not pretend we belong here.  
--From I Called Him Necktie, a novel by Milena Michiko Flašar, translated from the German by Sheila Dickie (New Vessel Press, 2014).  Originally published in German as Ich nannte ihn Krawatte (Verlag Klaus Wagenbach: Berlin, Germany, 2012).

Dad had a face that Arvid loved to watch, and at the same time made him nervous as it wasn't just a face but also a rock in the forest with its furrows and hollows, at least if he squinted when he looked.  
--From Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, stories by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Graywolf Press, 2015).  First published in Norwegian as Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (Forlaget Oktober: Oslo, Norway, 1987).  First published in English by Harvill Secker, Random House (London, 2013).  

The white houses sank and withdrew into the countryside and slowly the fjord grew wider.  The Vistula passed Drøbak and sailed on through the sound where the wreck of the battleship Blücher lay on the seabed by Oscarsborg fortress.  They had sailed over it and perhaps the dead bodies were still there.  The skies turned dark, but not by much, for it was Midsummer Night, and then it happened, what he was waiting for.  The little boat from the town of Horten appeared from behind an island and chugged across the fjord in a wide arc.  The noise from the Vistula's engine went quiet until he could barely hear its thrumming, and the spray from the bows ceased.  The Vistula glided through the water, waiting, and Arvid waited too.  The little boat approached and turned until it was in line with the ship.  Arvid could see the skipper at the helm and his white cap, and a couple were standing on the deck with a suitcase between them.  The man was holding his hat and the woman was looking straight down.   

--From Echoland, Per Petterson's debut novel, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Vintage/Penguin Random House UK, London, 2017).  First published in Norwegian as Ekkoland (Forlaget Oktober: Oslo, Norway, 1989).  First published in English by Harvill Secker (2016).

Someone gives a little cough and says: "I don't think there's anyone there yet.  It's probably too early."

     I know that voice, it's the lady from the kiosk next door.  I have known it for years.  She is right behind me.  I could pick her out with my eyes shut in the middle of Aker Brugge on a crowded Saturday afternoon in June.  I've been buying Petterøe 3 tobacco and Dagbladet and a Kvikk Lunsj chocolate bar from her since 1981.  And then I remember.  I do not work here any more.  I haven't worked here for three years.  

--From In the Wake, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2006).  A paperback version of In the Wake was published by Picador (2007).  First published in Norwegian as I kjølvannet (Forlaget Oktober: Oslo, Norway, 2000).  

Travel, two chronicles, and the presence and absence of women

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I could have taken the 7:50, or even the 8:53.  It's Monday.  Mondays are dead quiet at work.  It's just that I couldn't take it anymore.  What was I thinking, staying Sunday night.  I don't know what came over me.  Two days are more than enough. 
--From The 6:41 to Paris, a short novel by Jean-Philippe Blondel, translated from the French by Alison Anderson (New Vessel Press, 2015).  First published in French as 06h41 (Buchet/Chastel, Paris, 2013).

Anastasia Finizio, the older daughter of Angelina Finizio and the late Ernesto, one of Chiaia's leading hairdressers, who only a few years earlier had retired to a sunny and tranquil enclosure in the cemetery of Poggioreale, had just returned from High Mass (it was Christmas Day) at Santa Maria degli Angeli, in Monte de Dio, and still hadn't made up her mind to take off her hat.  Tall and thin, like all the Finizios, with the same meticulous, glittering elegance . . .  
--From "Family Interior," a short story by Anna Maria Ortese, from her collection Neapolitan Chronicles, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee (New Vessel Press, 2018), pp. 35-62.  Neapolitan Chronicles was first published in Italian as Il mare non bagna Napoli (Giulio Einaudi, Turin, Italy, 1953).

It turns out that MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières, AKA Doctors Without Borders] has no house for us.  We're going to have to find one.
In the meantime, we're living in the "guest house." It's where expat field workers live when they pass through the capital.  
The ground floor is taken up by MSF offices.  
For the first few days, I hole up on the top floor, while Nadège takes on her new duties.
Upstairs, I keep my eyes glued on Louis.
--From Burma Chronicles, a nonfiction comic by Guy Delisle, translated from the French by Helge Dascher (Drawn and Quarterly, 2008).  Originally published in France as Chroniques Birmanes by Editions Delcourt.

Two days later, at two in the afternoon, the yellow Saab 900 convertible was fixed and ready to drive.  The dented right front fender had been returned to its original shape, the painted patch blending almost perfectly with the rest of the car.  
--From "Drive My Car," the first story from Men Without Women, a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen (Knopf/Vintage/Penguin Random House, 2017).  Originally published in Japan as Onna no inai Otokotachi (Bungei Shunjū, Tokyo, 2014).

Women were occasionally allowed to study but not to get a degree in anything because of their small heads.  
Very occasionally a woman would learn a foreign language, go abroad to study, and come back qualified as a doctor, but that didn't prove anything except that women cause trouble as soon as you let them out.  
--From The Trouble with Women, a comic by Jacky Fleming (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2016).  First published in Great Britain by Square Peg.

A short memoir, a collection of essays, and three novels

~
We had moved to Cairo in October, 2011, during the first year of the Arab Spring.  We lived in Zamalek, a neighborhood on a long, thin island in the Nile River.  Zamalek has traditionally been home to middle- and upper-class Cairenes, and we rented an apartment on the ground floor of an old building that, like many structures on our street, was beautiful but fading.  Out in front of the Art Deco façade, the bars of a wrought-iron fence were shaped like spiderwebs.  
--From "Morsi the Cat," a personal history by Peter Hessler, The New Yorker (May 7, 2018), pp. 22-28.  (The online version appears with the title "Cairo: A Type of Love Story.") 

Though there's an industry built on telling you otherwise, there are few real joys to middle age.  The only perk I can see is that, with luck, you'll acquire a guest room.
--From "Company Man," the first essay in Calypso, a collection by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2018). 

All this happened quite a few years ago.  My mother had been unwell for some time.  To put a stop to my brothers' nagging and my father's especially, she finally went to see the doctor she always saw, the doctor my family had used since the dawn of time. . . . When [the results] finally arrived, three weeks later rather than two, it turned out that she had stomach cancer.  Her first reaction was as follows: Good Lord, here I've been lying awake night after night, year after year, especially when the children were small, terrified of dying from lung cancer, and then I get cancer of the stomach.  What a waste of time!    
--From I Curse the River of Time, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund with Per Petterson (Graywolf Press, 2010).  First published in Norwegian as Jeg forbanner tidens elv (Oktober Forlag, Oslo, Norway, 2008). 

I was thirteen years old and about to start the seventh class at Veitvet School.  My mother said she would go with me on the first day--we were new to the area, and anyway she had no job--but I didn't want her to.  
--From It's Fine By Me, a novel by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Graywolf Press, 2012/Picador, 2013).  First published in Norway by Forlaget Oktober, 1992, and in Great Britain by Harvill Secker, a division of Random House Group Ltd, London.   

Oki was alone in the observation car [of the Kyoto express].  Slouched deep in his armchair, he watched the end chair turn.  Not that it kept turning in the same direction, at the same speed: sometimes it went a little faster, or a little slower, or even stopped and began turning in the opposite direction.  To look at that one revolving chair, wheeling before him in the empty car, made him feel lonely.  Thoughts of the past began flickering through his mind.
       It was the twenty-ninth of December.  Oki was going to Kyoto to hear the New Year's Eve bells.  
--From Beauty and Sadness, a novel by Yasunari Kawabata, translated from the Japanese by Howard S. Hibbett (Vintage International, 1996).  First published in Japanese as Utsukushisa To Kanashimi To (Chuo koronosha, Tokyo, Japan, 1961).  First published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf (1975).