Fiction by Yoko Ogawa

~
Still, it wasn't immediately clear why a cousin, who was so much younger and had been out of touch for so long, should be calling to ask for something, nor could I imagine what I could possibly do to help him.  Instead of answering, I waited for him to continue.  "You see, I'm coming to college in Tokyo in April."
        "You can't be that old already!" I blurted out, honestly astonished.  He'd been a boy of four the last time I'd seen him.  
        "And I'm looking for a place to live, but I'm not having much luck.  Which is why I thought of you."
        "Me?"
        "Yes, I remembered hearing that you lived in a good dormitory when you were in school."  My years in the dormitory came back as we spoke, but the memories seemed as distant as those of playing with this young cousin.
--From "Dormitory," a novella by Yoko Ogawa, published in The Diving Pool: Three Novellas, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder (Picador, 2008), pp. 109-164.  "The Diving Pool," "Pregnancy Diary," and ""Dormitory" were first published in Japan (1990, 1991).

It was March of 1992 when the Akebono Housekeeping Agency first sent me to work for the Professor.  At the time, I was the youngest woman registered with the agency, which served a small city on the Inland Sea, although I already had more than ten years of experience.  I managed to get along with all sorts of employers, and even when I cleaned for the most difficult clients, the ones no other housekeeper would touch, I never complained.  I prided myself on being a true professional. 
        In the Professor's case, it only took a glance at his client card to know that he might be trouble.  A blue star was stamped on the back of the card each time a housekeeper had to be replaced, and there were already nine stars on the Professor's card, a record during my years with the agency.
--From The Housekeeper and the Professor, a novel by Yoko Ogawa, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder (Picador, 2009).  The Housekeeper and the Professor was originally published in Japan under the title Hakase no Aishita Sūshiki (Shinchōsha Publishing Co., Ltd., 2003).

The Doll Collection, an anthology of poems edited by Diane Lockward

~
These are some of my favorite poems from The Doll Collection, an anthology edited by Diane Lockward and published by Terrapin Books in 2016.

(Full disclosure: one of my poems, "In the Chair Museum," which was originally published in Eunoia Review, also appeared in this collection.)


I spotted it wedged on a dusty shelf
behind a rose-pattern, porcelain trinket-tray. . . .
--From "Marriage Doll" by Luanne Castle, p. 20.  Reprinted from her first collection of poetry, Doll God (Aldrich Press).

her plastic body is only visible if you remove 
her mother's stomach the size and color of a vanilla wafer . . .
--From "The Pregnant Doll" by Nicole Cooley, p. 27.

I had my own baby carriage
for my baby dolls to ride in
a fine, four-wheel thing . . . 
--From "Carriage" by Akua Lezli Hope, p. 61.

The stove doesn't work.  The food is painted
on the refrigerator door. . . . 
--From "The Only House in the Neighborhood" by Sarah Rose Nordgren, p. 82.  Reprinted from her debut collection of poetry, Best Bones (University of Pittsburgh Press).

Two weeks after my mother's death, the doll was 
waiting under the tree, the blonde-haired Amy I'd 
dreamed over in the Sears Christmas catalogue . . .
--From "Madame Alexander's Amy" by Alison Townsend, pp. 110-111.  Reprinted from The Blue Dress: Poems and Prose Poems (White Pine Press).  

Fiction by John L'Heureux and poetry by Denver Butson, Holly Iglesias, and Joyce Carol Oates

~
Beverly and I were second graders at New Carew Street School and we both hated recess.  She hated recess and she cried the whole time and nobody knew why, so everybody made fun of her.  I hated recess because it wasn't really school and we weren't learning anything.  It was a waste of time.  I knew Beverly only by name and by what I could tell from spying on her.  Her last name was LaPlante, which was strange and therefore wrong, and she was known for being a crybaby. . . .
--From "Three Short Moments in a Long Life," a short story by John L'Heureux, The New Yorker (May 9, 2016), pp. 56-61.

as far as I know
there is no such place
as The Avalanche Café . . . 
--From "Avalanche Café," a poem by Denver Butson, The Adroit Journal, Issue 7 (Summer 2013).

a V formation 
of flying geese
slowly unzips 
the sky's dress . . . 
--From "The Sky Erotic," a poem by Denver Butson, The Adroit Journal, Issue 7 (Summer 2013).

Heading west from Black Mountain to Asheville, strip mall
strip mall strip mall,  and at the light in Swannanoa what
remains of the junk store where we shopped for wine glasses
for a party for your new friends the year we lived apart . . . 
--From "Ye Olde Whatever Shoppe," a poem by Holly Iglesias, Palaver (Spring 2016), p. 18.

Bolts of cotton and worsted wool stand upright until a woman
of indeterminate age rocks on free from the weight of the 
others and lugs it to the table . . . 
--From "Cutting Table," a poem by Holly Iglesias, Palaver (Spring 2016), p. 20.

This is the season when the husbands lie
in their hemp-woven hammocks for the last time
reading The Nation in waning autumn light . . . 
--From "This Is the Season," a poem by Joyce Carol Oates, The New Yorker (April 4, 2016), p. 65.

Short fiction by Luke Mogelson and Raj Ramaswamy

~
I was staring at a brown sky.  Just moments earlier, a researcher from the United Nations Ornithological Department had told me that fecal particulate from the city's open sewage system made up an alarming proportion of the atmosphere in Kabul.  The researcher was the sort of person who would say, "If you really want something to write about . . ." or "You're looking for a story?  What if I were to tell you . . . ," as if, before meeting him, you had lived in darkness, scribbling claptrap of zero consequence to anybody.  He'd invited me to lunch because he had some urgent information regarding birds.  Something to do with the great migrations above the Hindu Kush, the desertification of Iranian wetlands, mass extinction.  "Have you ever seen a Siberian crane?" he asked me.  "No, you haven't.  No one in Afghanistan has seen a Siberian crane in the past twenty years."
        I pretended to take notes.  My notepad, back then, was mostly pretend notes.  Many of the pages featured detailed sketches of me killing myself by various means.  One especially tedious interview—with a mullah, another fucking mullah holding forth from behind a vertical index finger—had yielded a kind of comic strip of me leaping from a skyscraper, shooting myself in midair, and landing in front of a bus. . . . 
--From "Total Solar," a short story by Luke Mogelson, The New Yorker (February 29, 2016), pp. 58-63.

"Thank you, come again," this cop is saying in an impressive fake accent.  He's saying it to me, even though I'm the one standing here behind the register.  Even though I'm the quote-unquote Indian guy.  He's saying it to me because I won't say it to him, never have, never will.  I force a grin at him, and he pushes on out into the night, free coffee in hand.  It's this routine he has.  A joke.
--From "Night Shift," a short story by Raj Ramaswamy, Exposition Review (Flash 405, November 2015).

Short fiction from a collection of scary fairy tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

~
There once lived a woman who hated her neighbor—a single mother with a small child.  As the child grew and learned to crawl, the woman would sometimes leave a pot of boiling water in the corridor, or a container full of bleach, or she'd just spread out a whole box of needles right there in the hall.  The poor mother didn't suspect anything—her little girl hadn't learned to walk yet, and she didn't let her out in the corridor during the winter when the floor was cold.  But the time was fast approaching when her daughter would be able to leave the room on her own.  The mother would say to her neighbor, "Raya, sweetie, you dropped your needles again," at which point Raya would blame her poor memory.  "I'm always forgetting things," she'd say.  
        They'd once been friends. . . .   
(From "Revenge," pp. 7-11.)

There once lived a girl who was killed, then brought back to life.  That is, her parents were told that the girl was dead, but they couldn't have the body (they had all been riding the bus together; the girl was standing up front at the time of the explosion, and her parents were sitting behind her).  The girl was just fifteen, and she was thrown back by the blast. . . .
(From "The Fountain House," pp. 97-107, also published in English in a slightly different form in the August 21, 2009 issue of The New Yorker.)

She's a tall, grown-up, married woman now, but she was once an orphan living with her grandmother, who had taken her in when the girl's mother disappeared. . . .   
(From "The Shadow Life," pp. 108-114.)

There is clearly someone in the house.  Walk into the bedroom: something falls in the living room.  Look for the cat: it's sitting on the little table in the front hall, its ears pricked up; it clearly heard something, too.  Walk into the living room: a scrap of paper has fallen, all by itself, from the piano, with someone's phone number on it, you can't tell whose.  It just flew off the piano soundlessly and lies on the carpet, white and alone. . . . 
        Someone isn't being careful, thinks the woman who lives here.  Someone isn't even trying to hide anymore.  
        A person can be afraid of rodents, insects, little ants in the bath, even a lonely cockroach that's stumbled into your apartment in a drugged state, fleeing the disinfection campaign at the neighbors'—which is to say, he's just standing naked and defenseless, in plain view.  But a person can be afraid of anything when she's alone with her cat and everyone has departed, all her old family, leaving this little human roach completely by herself, unprotected. . . .   
(From "There's Someone in the House," pp. 124-138.)

--From There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, a collection of short fiction by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, selected and translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen and Anna Summers (Penguin Books, 2009).

The Spring 2016 issue of the Apple Valley Review

~
The Spring 2016 issue of the Apple Valley Review features an essay by Colin Pope; short fiction by Martha Clarkson, Sarah Wolf, Denise Tolan, and Knud Sørensen; a prose poem by Michael Chin; poetry by Gayane M. Haroutyunyan, Carmen Firan, Laura Lee Washburn, Kevin McLellan, Domenic Scopa, Virginia Barrett, Gail Peck, and K. J. Knoespel; and cover artwork by Thomas Cole.

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.

Short fiction by Yoko Ogawa, an essay by D. T. Max, and more

~
A waiter led us into a private room at the back of the restaurant, where the man was already seated at a table too large for three, sipping a garish red cocktail.  For some reason I had assumed he would be accompanied by a secretary or bodyguard, but he was alone.
        A chandelier hung from the ceiling and flowers had been arranged around the room.  The silverware gleamed, the tablecloth was blindingly white. 
        They barely greeted each other, exchanging little more than vague, meaningless grunts.  She sat down without introducing me, and I realized the moment for such formalities had already passed.  
--From "Fruit Juice," a short story by Yoko Ogawa, published in her collection of interconnected stories, Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder (Picador, 1998).

Darek Fidyka, who is forty-one years old, . . . was born and raised in Pradzew, a small farming town in central Poland, not far from Lodz.  At 3 A.M. on July 27, 2010, Fidyka and his girlfriend, Justyna, woke to the sound of someone smashing Fidyka's Volkswagen outside their house, a few miles from Pradzew.  They got out of bed, rushed out the door, and found her ex-husband, Jaroslaw, battering the car with a cinder block.
--From "One Small Step: A paraplegic undergoes pioneering surgery," an essay by D. T. Max, The New Yorker (January 25, 2016), pp. 48-57.

beside myself in Texas the doctors asking my beloved
to give his pain a number one to ten his answer is always
two I tell them eight the holly bush in the yard is putting out new leaves... 
--From "Chameleon," a poem by Ellen Bryant Voigt, The New Yorker (May 7, 2012), p. 34.

Weird Pig told the mule to send him email.  Send the real kind, he said.  All right?
        The mule was at a loss.  He had heard of email and mail, but mules were prohibited by law from sending or receiving either one.  He wasn't sure exactly what they were.
        Weird Pig didn't know what email was either, but he had overheard Farmer Dan talking about it with one of the chickens.  He thought he should let on to someone that he knew what it was.  It might improve his status on the farm.
--From "Real Mail," a short story by Robert Long Foreman, The Collapsar (January 15, 2016).

Boy 2 rescued you on the playground.  There was a kid who always showed up dressed like a cowboy, who one day climbed the ladder just behind you, put his lasso around your neck, and pushed you down the slide.  Boy 2 ran over to see if you were hurt--you weren't, just shocked by the sudden viciousness of it--and to shout at the other boy, "Leave her alone!"  He stood over you while you loosened the rope and helped you pull the noose off over your head.  
--From "An Inventory," a short story by Joan Wickersham, One Story, Volume 12, Number 8 (October 27, 2014).