Poetry by Tove Ditlevsen and Tim Seibles, a novella by Anita Desai, and novels by Marie Aubert and Anne Tyler

~
He would
in case of divorce
lay claim to half
of everything
he said.
Half a sofa,
half a TV, . . .
—From "Divorce 1," a poem by Tove Ditlevsen, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, The Paris Review, Issue 238 (Winter 2021). This poem will be included in There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die, a collection of poetry by Tove Ditlevsen (translated by Smith and Russell, with a foreword by Olga Ravn), which is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux on March 11, 2025.

I couldn't shake what Mum had said about forgiving myself, and even though I'd bought a new dress and had enjoyed so much prosecco that I was drunk by ten o'clock, I checked my phone constantly, I was on it all night long. Not one message came through to tell me how things had gone, the operation should have been over and done with hours earlier. I knew that Mum was punishing me, but still my palms felt clammy, I tried calling her but she wouldn't pick up, and I felt certain that something had gone wrong after all, that they hadn't had a chance to call me, that there was no signal wherever they were, I went outside and tried calling from there, stood on the pavement not far from my friends, who were smoking, and felt as if the ground was collapsing beneath my feet, and I stood there, drunk, sobbing, Mum not picking up, until eventually I hung up.  
—From Grown Ups, a novel by Marie Aubert, translated from the Norwegian by Rosie Hedger (Pushkin Press, 2021). This segment is from page 33 of the paperback.  

as though both trying
to hide and begging
to be seen.
—From "Something Like We Did II," one of three poems by Tim Seibles, Poetry (September 2023). 

All the benches in the Jardín facing the pink spikes and spires of the Parroquia are already taken by lovers of the morning sun, but you find one set back under the meticulously trimmed and shaped trees you are told are Indian laurels, where you can sit making your way at leisure through the Spanish-language newspapers you have bought from the vendor who spreads out a variety of them on the low wall that surrounds the Jardín. . . . Then becoming aware, without wanting to, of a woman seated on a bench across from you, dressed in a flamboyant Mexican style that few Mexican women assume at any other than festive occasions: skirt upon skirt of cotton and tulle in indigo, lime, crimson and saffron, her arms spread over the back of the bench festooned with bangles.   
—From Rosarita, a slim novella by Anita Desai (Scribner, 2025). 

[My father's] watch was a Timex with a face as big as a fifty-cent piece, and whenever my mother kept him waiting he would frown down at it and give it a tap. . . . when I was a little girl, I imagined he was trying to make time move faster—to bring my mother before us instantly, already wearing her coat, like someone in a speeded-up movie. 
—From Three Days in June, a novel by Anne Tyler (Knopf, 2025). 

Fiction by Etgar Keret, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Maki Kashimada; an essay by David Sedaris; and three poems

~

Summers spent practicing in the apartment

stairwell: hand on the bannister, one foot after

another. Did I ever tell you I couldn't walk

until I was three and then sort of dragged

myself up and downstairs until I was seven

or eight? . . . 

—From "Achingly Beautiful How the Sky Blooms Umber at the End of the Day, Through the Canopy," a poem by Gabrielle Calvocoressi (Poem-a-Day, June 15, 2015, Academy of American Poets). 

SAD COW

A. had a recurring dream. He dreamed it almost every night, but in the morning, when Goodman or one of the instructors woke him and asked if he remembered what he had dreamed, he was always quick to say no. This wasn't because the dream was scary or embarrassing, it was just a stupid dream in which he was standing on top of a grassy hill beside an easel, painting the pastoral landscape in watercolors. The landscape in the dream was breathtaking, and since A. had come to the institution as a baby, the grassy hill was probably an imaginary place he had thought up or a real place he had seen in a picture or short film in one of his classes. The only thing that kept the dream from being completely pleasant was a huge cow with human eyes that was always grazing right next to A.'s easel.

—From "Tabula Rasa," a short story by Etgar Keret. It appeared (pp. 29-44) in his story collection Fly Already, which was translated into English by Sondra Silverston, Nathan Englander, Jessica Cohen, Miriam Shlesinger, and Yardenne Greenspan (Riverhead Books, 2019). The collection was originally published in Hebrew, in somewhat different form, as A Glitch at the Edge of the Galaxy (Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir, 2018). "Tabula Rasa" was first published in English as "A.: Only Through Death Will You Learn Your True Identity" in a Fiction Issue of Wired (December 13, 2016).

The room's a bit dark, the lights are off. The heat feels excessive even though in general I tend to prefer the heat. I start to take off my jacket and scarf right away. There's just one other patient waiting, another woman trapped with me in that room. She looks about twenty years older than I am. She watches me carefully, without warmth in her eyes. Her gaze is impenetrable. I can't manage to remove the scarf, it's gotten tangled up with my necklace. How ridiculous. The woman keeps looking at me as if there were a screen between us, as if I were a person on television.

—From Whereabouts, a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf, 2021). The book was originally written and published in Italian as Dove Mi Trovo (Milan, Italy: Ugo Guanda Editore S.r.l., 2018) and translated into English by the author. This section is from page 20 of the hardcover.

Taichi, however, was unaware of her thoughts. Having boarded the bullet train, his four bad limbs bumped against the seats here and there, until finally he came to the one designated on his ticket and sat down with a plump. If he were anyone else, his failure to show reserve with respect to his disability might, far from engendering sympathy, have invited nothing short of annoyed frowns. But he was oblivious to that kind of unreasonableness. He merely beckoned to her from his seat, as if his having found it by himself were some kind of great achievement. 

—From Touring the Land of the Dead, a novella by Maki Kashimada, translated from the Japanese by Haydn Trowell (Europa Editions, 2021). Also included in the book is a second novella, Ninety-Nine Kisses. The pair were originally published in Japanese as Meido Meguri; 99 no seppun (Tokyo, Japan: Kawade Shobo Shinsha Ltd. Publishers, 2012).

My sister is not dating anyone—a good thing, as she’s got way too much time on her hands. And that, I think, is the No. 1 reason so many relationships fail. Too much free time, and too much time together. I’m normally away from Hugh between four and six months a year, and when the pandemic cancelled the tours I had scheduled I panicked. We were in New York at the time, so I sought out his old friend Carol. “What’s he really like?” I asked her. “I think I sort of knew once, but that was twenty-five years ago.”
—From "Pearls," an essay by David Sedaris, The New Yorker (May 17, 2021), pp. 20-22. 

Slowly the great birds rise into the soft golden air above the village.

—From "The Great Birds," a poem by Kenneth Patchen, Poetry (May 1955).

It is 1992. Weekends, we paw at cheap
silverware at yard sales.
—From "Naturalization," a poem by Jenny Xie (Poem-a-Day, August 28, 2017, Academy of American Poets).

Halflife, a collection of poems by Meghan O'Rourke

~
The blue square of light
in the window across the street
never goes dark--

the cathodes, the cordage, the atoms
working the hem of dusk--
traveling past the cranes and the docks

and the soiled oyster beds, 
the trees loaded with radium, 
colors like guns, 

. . . 

I came through the sodium streets
past the diners, a minister idly turning his glass, 
service stations, gas, cars sharp in the light.

How long will the light go on?
Longer than you.  Still you ought to live like a city, 
rich and fierce at the center.

--From "Halflife," a poem by Meghan O'Rourke, first published in the magazine Poetry (September 2005) and reprinted in her collection Halflife (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007), pp. 23-24.

A Night in Brooklyn (the collection and the poem)

~
A Night in Brooklyn, a collection of poetry by D. Nurkse (Alfred A. Knopf, 2012).

...she was washing
at the cold tap, she was binding
back her copper hair...
--From "Red Antares in a Blue Mirror," p. 9, originally published in Harvard Review (Issue 41, Winter 2011). 

 

...

always I teetered on that high stool

while the Schlitz globe revolved so slowly,

disclosing Africa, Asia, Antarctica...
 --From "The Bars," p. 16, originally published in The New Yorker (October 31, 2011, p. 84).  

We undid a button,

turned out the light,

and in that narrow bed

we built a great city...  
--From "A Night in Brooklyn," p. 49, originally published in Poetry (January 2008).

We have to bomb the rebel cities
from a great height, find shelter
for the refugees, carry a sick kitten
to the shade of a blighted elm,
fall in love, walk by the breakwater...

--From "There Is No Time, She Writes," p. 73, originally published in The New Yorker (August 6, 2007).

...

they had not imagined the pain

of dressing, sorting clothes

back into male and female...

--From "Return to the Capital," p. 82, originally published as "A Night in the Capital" in The Manhattan Review (Volume 13, Number 2; Fall/Winter 2008-2009). 

Poetry by Sandra Beasley

~
"Unit of Measure" by Sandra Beasley (poem from Poetry, July/August 2009; reprinted at Poetry Daily on July 7, 2009)