Photo: Chris Devers/FlickrA bar mitzvah brings multiple generations of a family together in celebration, far from the reach of the evil eye.NEW ROCHELLE,…
Fiction
Photo: Sarah McGee/FlickrWhile visiting a kibbutz to give a lecture, and after dining on both hot desert-root vegetable soup and sushi, the speaker becomes the listener when someone in th…
photo: arcaion/pixabayAfter work, my friend and I go to the Café de Prague in the heart of the Hamra district. As we sit at a table by the large window, looking out on the lighted street, I think abou…
After deciding to end it all, a woman takes a final subway ride. Z, the story writer, decided to end her diary. What is more, with an eye on approaching Christmas, she would adorn it with sta…
Through story and stranger, two fallen-out friends mediate their way back to one another in the Edinburgh Zoo.Meet me in the waves, you bad fisherman, and I will give you Death by Water.Those…
And somewhere in all these, all these possible variants of the bus-taking crowd, was Karl, who would appear from out of nowhere, and I would be the only one who could see him.I…
An apartment on the bank of the Nile River for a fair price sounds like a no-brainer, unless that apartment happens to be right next to one of the most infamous prisons in Egypt.The…
Photo: Katherine Dewey HillThis story begins with three @ handles and ends with two.With a single hashtag, repeated insistently like a mantra: #m…
Photo: Daniel KriegIn post-unification Berlin, groups of squatters compete for empty housing. Who will gain the upper hand?The next morning, a group of angry men were standing in the…
Illustration: flickr.com / xyzquantumpoetA Lutheran seminary student wonders what it takes to become a Jew for his girlfriend, whose embrace is “not a preface to anything el…
Photo: Kai C. SchwarzerA relationship is put to the test when a young couple visits a family member on an isolated island.We left home to think it over. Nanna had an abortion three years ago,…
Photo: Michael PereckasOf Darkness is a book about love and death. These seem to me to be the only things worth writing about. When you write about love and death, the beauty in this world’s fabri…
STABLE URLhttp://www.gumtree.co.za/a-car-tyres-rims/overport/for-sale-set-of-second-hand-imported-momo/1001639422780910165059408SALE AREAOverport (Durban)DATE…
How to Deliver a GeniusAdvice from a St. Petersburg–based website (*)Conceive in April, May, or June. A child conceived in the fall has no chance to amount to anythin…
Mexico City’s TAPO station from above. Photo: Anthony QuigleyShe picks up her suitcase. Gets in line. Shows her ticket without letting her fist tremble. Checks her luggage. They’re not go…
Photo: Gerry Paille/FlickrIn this story from a snowy Greenland, a woman reluctantly joins her husband in the woods for a grouse hunt. Ready . . . aim . . . She’s still in bed. S…
Tamas Galambos, Summer, 1981, oil on canvas. A detail from Galambos’s painting also appears on the cover of García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude reprinted by Pengu…
Photo: Funkyfood London - Paul Williams / AlamyAlong the shore of the Danube, a cat reflects on world history and human nature. From Oppenheimer to Donne to Stalin to Ana Pauker the musin…
Photo by Jo Christian OterhalsIf, the woman thinks, she were an airplane that crashed and someone located the little black box, that would be the sentence they found, to hear water, but n…
Gustav Klimt, Allée in the Gardens of Schloss Kammer, 1912, oil on canvas. Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria / Artothek / Bridgeman imagesRide the tram thro…
Photo: flickr.com/people/duluoz_catsWith Neil Young playing in the background, a New Zealand woman living in Australia recrosses the ocean over a game of Checkers. Luke shakes t…
Photo by Ariel DovasStasis and disruption go head to head in this story from Macedonia.It’s not clear whether my husband is going to be ambassador for much longer, as he might be rec…
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall. – Robert FrostEven from a distance we could tell something was wrong with the wall. When we went out to the pasture the ground seeme…
Photo by Soffie HicksIn this story by Brazil’s nominee for the Nobel Prize, a young girl will let nothing stop her from attending Carnival, not even her dying father.The blue-and-whi…
A broken foot is poor luck and a nuisance. It cancels everything from hikes to trips to Germany. It gives your insurance company an opportunity to feast and acquaints you with an orthopedist, often mo…