A novel by Ha Jin and short stories by Alice Munro, Ethan Canin, and Laura van den Berg

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The solution to my life occurred to me one evening while I was ironing a shirt.  It was simple but audacious.  I went into the living room where my husband was watching television and I said, "I think I ought to have an office. . . ."

--From "The Office," a short story by Alice Munro, first published in The Montrealer and reprinted in Dance of the Happy Shades (The Ryerson Press (Canada), 1968; McGraw-Hill Book Company (United States), 1973), pp. 59-74.

Now that Mary McQuade had come, I pretended not to remember her.  It seemed the wisest thing to do.  She herself said, "If you don't remember me you don't remember much," but let the matter drop, just once adding, "I bet you never went to your Grandma's house last summer.  I bet you don't remember that either. . . ."  

 --From "Images," a short story by Alice Munro, published in Dance of the Happy Shades (The Ryerson Press (Canada), 1968; McGraw-Hill Book Company (United States), 1973), pp. 30-43. 

Everybody was surprised when Professor Yang suffered a stroke in the spring of 1989. . . .  His stroke unsettled me, because I was engaged to his daughter, Meimei, and under his guidance I had been studying for the Ph.D. entrance exams for the classical literature program at Beijing University.  I hoped to enroll there so that I could join my fiancée in the capital, where we planned to build our nest.  Mr. Yang's hospitalization disrupted my work, and for a whole week I hadn't sat down to my books, having to go see him every day. . . .   

--From The Crazed, a novel by Ha Jin (Pantheon/Random House, 2002). 

I tell this story not for my own honor, for there is little of that here, and not as a warning, for a man of my calling learns quickly that all warnings are in vain.  Nor do I tell it in apology for St. Benedict's School, for St. Benedict's School needs no apologies.  I tell it only to record certain foretellable incidents in the life of a well-known man, in the event that the brief candle of his days may sometime come under scrutiny of another student of history.  That is all.  This is a story without surprises. . . .  

--From "The Palace Thief," a short story by Ethan Canin, first published in The Paris Review, Number 128 (Fall 1993), and reprinted in The Palace Thief (Random House, 1994), pp. 155-205.

 

...It was my daughter's job to assemble the game board, my husband's to shuffle the cards, and mine to make drinks in the kitchen: Sprite in a highball glass for my daughter, whiskey with no ice for my husband and me.  Every other Friday night, my husband had been the Banker, handling the money, buildings, and title deed cards, but for this game, I had decided to change things up.  Before leaving the kitchen, I plucked an ice cube from the freezer with a little pair of silver tongs and dropped it into his drink. . . . 

--From "The Golden Dragon Express," a short story by Laura van den Berg, first published in Storyglossia, Issue 27 (March 2008), and reprinted in There Will Be No More Good Nights Without Good Nights (Origami Zoo Press, 2012), pp. 27-29.  

Four poems from Like a Beggar and The Human Line

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Bad things are going to happen. 

Your tomatoes will grow a fungus

and your cat will get run over.

Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream

melting in the car . . .
 --From "Relax," a poem by Ellen Bass, first published in The American Poetry Review and reprinted in Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), pp. 3-4. 

  

"I'm fat and I'm old and I'm going to die," Dorianne says

as we're taking our after-dinner walk on the grounds of Esalen . . .

--From "Women Walking," a poem by Ellen Bass, first published in The American Poetry Review, Volume 38, Number 1, and reprinted in Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), pp. 21-22.

 

...She's a dead ringer for my mother,

sipping black coffee, scrambling eggs,

a cigarette burning in a cut-glass ashtray.

She opens the store.  Amber whiskeys

and clear vodkas shine on wooden shelves,

bruise-dark wine rising in the slender necks. . . . 

--From "The Muse of Work," a poem by Ellen Bass, first published in New Ohio Review, Issue 11, and reprinted in Like a Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), pp. 60-61.

 

And yet, wouldn't it be welcome

at the end of an ordinary day?

The audience could be small,

the theater modest.  Folding chairs

in a church basement would do.

Just a short earnest burst of applause

that you got up that morning

and, one way or another,

made it through the day. . . . 

--From "Don't Expect Applause," a poem by Ellen Bass, The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), pp. 87-88.

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).   

The Fall 2014 issue of the Apple Valley Review

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The Fall 2014 issue of the journal features poetry by Philip Belcher, Laura Lee Beasley, Bill Rector, Joan Mazza, Laura Merleau, Joseph Chaney, José Angel Araguz, Marge Piercy, Shoshauna Shy, and P M F Johnson; prose poetry by Cameron Conaway; nonfiction by J. Malcolm Garcia; short fiction by John Oliver Hodges, Timothy Day, and Missy-Marie Montgomery; and acrylic on panel by cover artist Hugh Greer. 

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.

This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a poem by Maria Richardson, and two pieces from McSweeney's

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It is both selfish of me and not
to ask you to stay a little longer. 

The mountains are playing that game
where one of them wears a cloud as a veil

and then the others follow. 
They are forcing us to play. 

They are asking us to dedicate the day
to the books on the bottom shelf. 
...

--From "To You," a poem by Maria Richardson, Best American Poetry blog (January 11, 2014).    

 

The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living.  My short stories and novels have always filled my life with meaning, but, at least in the first decade of my career, they were no more capable of supporting me than my dog was.  But part of what I love about both novels and dogs is that they are so beautifully oblivious to economic concerns.  We serve them, and in return they thrive.  It isn't their responsibility to figure out where the rent is coming from.  
--From This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of essays by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins, 2013). 

Dear Class of 1994,

I regret to announce my resignation as “Most Likely to Succeed.” Nearly twenty years since the senior superlative was announced in our yearbook, it’s clear that I’ve fallen short of your expectations.  . . .

--From "An Open Letter to My 1994 High School Class Regarding My Designation of 'Most Likely to Succeed,'" a piece by Eric Corpus, McSweeney's (January 25, 2013). 

Dear TV Snobs,

TV was invented because we were tired of talking to each other and needed something else to do. You, though, keep trying to have intellectual discussions about politics and the arts while we’re watching Dancing with the Stars. Despite your oddity, we’ve tried not to make fun of you. We learned how wrong it is to judge people by watching special episodes of Family Ties and The Brady Bunch.   . . .

--From "An Open Letter to TV Snobs," a piece by Beverly Petravicius, McSweeney's (August 19, 2011). 

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (stories)

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She told him her only memory of her mother.  She was downtown, with her mother, on a winter day.  There was snow between the sidewalk and the street.  She had just learned how to tell time, and she looked up at the Post Office clock and saw that the moment had come for the soap opera she and her mother listened to every day on the radio.  She felt a deep concern, not because of missing the story but because she wondered what would happen to the people in the story, with the radio not turned on, and her mother and herself not listening.  It was more than concern she felt, it was horror, to think of the way things could be lost, could not happen, through some casual absence or chance. 
--From "Post and Beam," a short story by Alice Munro, published by The New Yorker (December 11, 2000) and reprinted in her collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (Knopf, 2001), pp. 188-218 in the Vintage Contemporaries paperback edition.

Two poems and a memoir by Tarn Wilson

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Late summer 1971, my father quit his job in Washington, D.C. as the Brookings Institution's first computer programmer, bought an old school bus with "Suck Nixon" painted on the side, and packed us off for British Columbia. 
        . . . Set loose in the primeval Canadian wilderness, my sister and I were to be educated by the land, released from shame, fear, insecurities, sexual hangups, and shallow social conventions imposed by a corrupt and repressive culture.  In our natural, unspoiled state, we'd be happy and free.

--From The Slow Farm, a memoir by Tarn Wilson (Ovenbird Books Nonfiction Series, 2014). 

 

 

Betsy's boyfriend dumped her this morning

and when she comes to the door

I am in my underpants, unable to console her. 

...

--From "Living Alone with Small Dogs," a poem by Matthew Siegel, Cimarron Review (Issue 181, Fall 2012), p. 14.   

 

 

She used the stadium. I would have
chosen the bridge. We’re not even

 

Division One. Our tailgate crowds
are mostly enthusiastic about beer. 

. . .

--From "Ready Regret," a poem by Lisa Olstein, Linebreak (July 22, 2014).