In her forty-two years on God’s wide Earth, Gerda has read no books other than The Bible and Luther’s Small Catechism, but once, after Sunday service, she heard the sexton say that there are places where the dead traverse a river after death, paying a boatsman to ferry them across the water. Gerda knows such …
Light and night are falling from me,Death and day are opening on me… Who do you think you are, an artist? Here’s a story. When you were nothing more than an underfed slip of a girl, you carried home butter wrapped in newspaper. Unfolding it, you discovered—O serendipity!—reprinted poems of Tennyson. And thus, romantic appetite …
On the ferry to the island, I saw a man dressed as a jester. His image flashed into view in my side mirror as I sat there half-dozing behind the steering wheel. It was midday as we chugged along across the sound, and the sun glared off the smattering of pickups and SUVs and vans …
I don’t want the things they offer me. Warm blood and broken skulls. Grunting pigs and headless roosters. Bottles of cold milk I can’t drink and hard bread I can’t eat. There’s only one thing I really want, and none of them is likely to give it to me. I’m tired, and I want to …
Their Blood Smells of Love and Terror, by Josh Rountree Keep Reading »
It is festival time in the Narrow City. The air is thick with the sound of rustling paper, as though a whirlwind is loose in a library. The Narrow City is as old as the world on the other side of the Gates, older than the Gates, older than the Guardians. Parts of the City …
Most of the newly dead don’t know what they want anymore, and that’s a good thing. But some sure as hell do. I’m still sore from the soul that yesterday wrapped itself around one last need like a fist. Most souls appear to me like milkweed wisps and bits of packing twine. My friend at …
Death drives a fast car. It’s cream and silver—like a pale horse. When it needs service, she comes here, because we’re the best shop in town. If I could’ve put “Services Death’s BMW” on my signboard and had anyone believe me, I’d’ve done it right off. Fact is, our shop’s looked out for her vehicle …
Ocean’s twelfth therapist isn’t fully licensed in the state of Maine. Her office is an RV parked behind the Hannaford, from which she also sells crystals, blueberry jam, and sex. Her advice is erratic and mystic, largely unhelpful, but Ocean doesn’t mind. She doesn’t want to be helped. A therapist is, in her estimation, a …
Nothing says Puerto Rican funeral more than milky coffee, hot chocolate, bread, cheese, and stale pastries. Francisco Oller perfectly captured a snapshot of Puerto Rico in El Velorio, but Oller never painted the afterlife. He’d settled on the living and their celebration. Partying in La Placita captured the essence of life in my island, except …
When you arrive in the Afterlife, you eat and you drink. Pomegranate seeds, the arils like edible jewels, sweet and tart and bitter, garnet beads that burst as you chew. Fungi you know—Porcini; Portobello; Oyster; Straw—and some you don’t—violet Amethyst Deceivers and nubby Dead Man’s Toes—the taste of the things they’ve fed from, the things …
