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).

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

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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.

"Above the Mountaintops" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Repentance" by Natasha Trethewey, and three other poems

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Above the mountaintops
all is still.
Among the treetops you can feel 
barely a breath--
--From "Above the Mountaintops," a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated from the German by Rita Dove, The New Yorker (November 13, 2017), p. 63.

To make it right     Vermeer painted     then painted over
this scene     a woman alone at a table     the cloth pushed back
rough folds at the edge     as if     someone     had risen
--From "Repentance," a poem by Natasha Trethewey, The New Yorker (November 20, 2017), pp. 66-67.

Near a recently thawed pond, within a long
channel of construction, a man holding a sign.
One side says slow, the other stop.  
Joy and sorrow always run like parallel lines.
--From "Signs for the Living," a poem by Didi Jackson, The New Yorker (October 2, 2017), p. 42.

Tonight I found out that I am divorced.
My second try at marriage, and it's through. 
Relief is what I feel most, mixed with pain, of course, 
remorse, and just plain grief, which makes me think of you, 
you who knew such sorrow in your life
and all the ways that love can come undone, 
who was the first to call yourself my wife . . .  
--From "News of My Divorce Reminds Me of Your Death," a poem by Taylor Mali, Rattle (December 7, 2017).

The media loves pitting women against women: how do you feed your baby, why don't you fit in that dress, disposable diapers last 8 billion years even in the guts of sharks, gold digger, cougar, jailbait, cat fight.  On Coney Island, Miki Sudo downed 38 hot dogs in 10 minutes for the national crown. 
--From "Mother's Day," a poem by Karen Skolfield, Waxwing, Issue XIII (Fall 2017).

Three poems by Lynne Knight, a novel by Samanta Schweblin, and a short story collection by Ha Jin

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We broke things.  Glasses, a lead crystal vase, 
the ceramic chicken painted à la portuguaise.  

It was the longest, hardest winter in a decade.
Snow against the windows, sealing us inside.
--From "Survival," a poem by Lynne Knight, published in Poetry Daily on November 10, 2016, from her collection The Persistence of Longing (Terrapin Books, 2016).  


I loved hearing the guy on the local station
in the small town where I lived for twenty years: 
Here in the foothills of the Adirondacks.
I was trying to become a poet, and I thought
everything I heard could become a poem
if I could figure out how to make use of it, 
the way frontierswomen made use of berries . . . 
--From "The Twenty-Year Workshop," a poem by Lynne Knight, Rattle, Number 50 (Winter 2015).  


I was thinking No.  No, oh no.  Not one more thing.
I was thinking my mother, who sat rigid
in the passenger seat crying, How terrible!
as if we had hit a child not your front bumper, 
would drive me mad, and then there would be 
two of us mad, mother and daughter . . . 
--From "To the Young Man Who Cried Out 'What Were You Thinking?' When I Backed Into His Car," a poem by Lynne Knight, Rattle, Number 32 (Winter 2009).  


It's dark and I can't see.  The sheets are rough, they bunch up under my body.  I can't move, but I'm talking.
          It's the worms.  You have to be patient and wait.  And while we wait, we have to find the exact moment when the worms come into being.
--From Fever Dream, a brief novel by Samanta Schweblin, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell (Riverhead Books, 2017).


The moment Hong Chen entered the narrow lane leading to Lilian's house, a bloody rooster landed before her, jumping about and scattering its feathers.  Four little boys ran over with knives and a hatchet in their hands.  "Kill, kill him!" one boy cried, but none of them dared approach the rooster, whose throat was cut half through.
--From "Taking a Husband," a short story by Ha Jin, from his often brutal collection Under the Red Flag (Zoland Books/Steerforth Press, 1999), pp. 132-153.

Five poems from Rattle, short stories from Post Road Magazine and One Story, and a novel

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One fear replaces another.  Each night now I wake 
in fear that I've crushed her in bed.  Sometimes it's so bad 
I wake the husband and the two of us, in the slight light 
of the streetlight, are in there, in the king bed digging, 
through pillows and sheets, looking for our baby.
Digging and digging as if our bed was the terrible ground
beneath the floorboards.  We sweat, breathe heavy; 
I'm crying.   

The power to kill something is so strong up in me, 
and so strange to be right next to the part of me
that can love something this much. . . . 
--From "She Rings Like a Bell Through the Night," a poem by Jan LaPerle, Rattle, Number 35 (Summer 2011).

Mostly love is about grunt work,
heaving unwieldy pieces of furniture 
up a trackless mountain . . .
--From "Where We Are Most Tender," a poem by Francesca Bell, Rattle, Number 40 (Summer 2013).

The day I finally rose staggering
from our bed of kryptonite . . . 
--From "First Responders," a poem by Francesca Bell, Rattle, Number 35 (Summer 2011).

In a black          tank-top 
my man             can say
just about         anything.
--From "In a Black Tank Top," a poem by Danielle DeTiberus, Rattle, Number 43 (Spring 2014).  "In a Black Tank Top" was chosen by Sherman Alexie for Best American Poetry 2015.

I gave the waitress in the café a fifty & she gave me my change got sidetracked & left the fifty on the counter all alone with me & my conscience . . . 
--From "A Poem for Uncertainties," a poem by Mark Terrill, Rattle, Number 27 (Summer 2007).

She's eating the scones and I'm watching, sipping black tea with milk but no sugar.  Actually, she hasn't quite started yet.  She's still spreading clotted cream on each half of the split scone, then homemade jam on top of that.  As she does this, she warns me she might make groaning noises.  Just so, you know, I know.  That's fine, I shrug, feeling little bits of me catch fire.  I've got the teacup in my hand, my finger crooked in the little handle that's too small for it so the circulation's getting cut off.  I watch her bite into the scone with her little bunny teeth.  I watch gobs of clotted cream catch in either corner of her lip.  She tilts her head back, closes her eyes, starts to make what must be the groaning noises.  I pour myself more tea and cup it in both hands like it's warming them, even though it's gone cold.  
--From "The Girl I Hate," a short story by Mona Awad, Post Road Magazine, Issue 27.

Consider the look on Whatsherface's face when I bought her a well drink and told her I lived on a sailboat.  Maybe my life wasn't so bad. . . . All considered, it was a damp version of pretty okay.  
          But then she asked what I did for work, and I told her.
          "I pump fuel at the marina fuel dock for eight dollars an hour, but mostly I read magazines and eat sandwiches, or watch my dog laze in the sun and lick pelican shit off the cement."
          The look changed, got scrunchier.  
--From "All Lateral," a short story by Matt Sumell, first published in One Story, Volume 12, Number 11 (January 19, 2015).  

It was a short one-paragraph item in the morning edition.  A friend rang me up and read it to me.  Nothing special.  Something a rookie reporter fresh out of college might've written for practice.
          The date, a street corner, a person driving a truck, a pedestrian, a casualty, an investigation of possible negligence.
          Sounded like one of those poems on the inner flap of a magazine.  
          "Where's the funeral?" I asked.  
          "You got me," he said.  "Did she even have a family?" 
--From A Wild Sheep Chase, a novel by Haruki Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum (Vintage Books, 1989).  

Fiction by Rebekah Matthews, nonfiction by Liz Prato, and poems by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, José Angel Araguz, and Pablo Neruda

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The next morning my roommate and I talk online, complaining about Gerard; we wonder if Gerard's girlfriend really likes him more than she liked girls. We look up Gerard on Facebook. There are photos of him posing in front of the mirror, his shirt pulled up, showing his impressively chiseled abs. There are photos of him with his girlfriend. She is pretty with red curly hair and freckles. There is one picture of her smiling at him the way my girlfriend sometimes smiles at her kids. . . .
--From "I Promise to Never Fall in Love with a Stranger," a short story by Rebekah Matthews, Wigleaf (August 21, 2014). 

My brother's autopsy report arrived in the mail on Christmas Eve.  I'd ordered it the week before. . . . 
--From "Anatomy of an Autopsy Report," nonfiction by Liz Prato, Summerset Review (Fall 2014).   

There is a ghost in the machine of my body. The haunting
happens like this: I loll on the bed, open-mouthed,
acting dead. My husband asks, Are you dead
again? My gallbladder this time. . . .

--From "Ghost in the Machine," a poem by Brett Elizabeth Jenkins, Linebreak (September 9, 2014). 

I made up a story for myself once,
That each glove I lost
Was sent to my father in prison . . .

--From "Gloves," a poem by José Angel Araguz, Rattle, Number 28 (Winter 2007), and on the website of the Poetry Foundation. 

Under the trees light
has dropped from the top of the sky,
light
like a green
latticework of branches . . .
--From "Ode to Enchanted Light," a poem by Pablo Neruda, reprinted on the blog "A Year of Being Here" (June 9, 2014).   

Two poems and two books

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"Why I Opted for the More Expensive Oil at Jiffy Lube," a poem by Julie Price Pinkerton, Rattle, Volume 19, Number 2 (Summer 2013).

"On Reading a Newspaper for the First Time as an Adult," a poem by Sharon Olds, from her collection Stag's Leap (Knopf, 2012, p. 71), and originally published in The New Yorker. 

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (Random House, 2011). 

My Mortal Enemy by Willa Cather (Knopf, 1926).