So this is East Germany, 1972. We scramble for our passports, watching passengers exit under machine guns aimed at our train from atop nineteenth-century iron catwalks arching above the tracks. ...
It’s always one of two nightmares: I’m either trapped in a room with a many-faced man, or he’s chasing me into the street outside my childhood home.
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The cop climbs in the back seat and introduces himself, Naim. Like many Afghans he has just one name.
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Do it then, you fuck. Fuck you, you think as you lean into the wind and throttle down hard, gunning the bike just feet from the glistening blue Maserati’s rear ...
I don’t remember the kid’s name; the only impression he made on me was his face: scabbed over, crusted with dried blood all across his chin.
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“Η καρδιά. Yi kardiá. Heart.”
“Η βάρκα. Yi várka. Boat.”
“Η χώρα. Yi hóra. Country.”
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Forgive them, for they like their women dead
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What, a friend who came to visit me asked, is a writing group?
It’s just like a barn, I said. Horses.
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For me, the colony of lights that speckle the midnight city is always preferable to the monarchic blaze of the summer sky.
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My grandfather and his best friend made the trip to the coast to find that the only work to be had was picking fruit for ten cents an hour.
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One husband, two sons. Alive. Limbs and faculties intact. I got away with it?
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Freedom comes at high costs, and requires plenty of responsibility…Latvia learned this the hard way. And it is a lesson, and a price, my adopted home country of the ...
I had taken some thirty years ago – a walk that had stunned and disturbed me at the time, but which I had since almost forgotten…
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It was thirteen years ago that I set foot on your shores, as a starry-eyed, newly married, first-time expat.
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“That car’s just too big for you, love, you can’t handle it.”
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Nasalized vowels. Rolled r’s. They seemed to widen the distance between me and my family. I wanted to go home.
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Both are meant to protect us, but at what cost?
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Haven’t you heard of concealer for those dark circles, and by God, what a miracle that men will even speak to you. “I bet they like your bit of crazy, ...
Yet now I am here, in this room with metal tables. To make the messiness of bodies easier to clean up
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I remember telling him three times…Does it still matter? Does it still count?
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