The Shark-Infected Custard
Charles Willeford
It started out as kind of a joke, and then it wasn’t funny any more because money became involved. Deep down, nothing about money is funny.
Charles Willeford
It started out as kind of a joke, and then it wasn’t funny any more because money became involved. Deep down, nothing about money is funny.
Arnon Grunberg
…
‘Heb je nooit gedacht: wat merkwaardig dat ik mijn vrouw nooit een orgasme heb bezorgd? Wat curieus. Misschien wordt het tijd dat ik dat eens ga doen, of ga leren hoe ik dat moet doen. Er zijn boeken over volgeschreven, instructieve video’s daarover zijn te koop in zo ongeveer ieder reformhuis. Heb je nooit gedacht: ik moet daar eens iets aan doen, al is het maar één keer. Heb je nooit gedacht: wat naar. Voor haar. Wat moet ze van me denken? Misschien moet ik studeren. Misschien moet ik oefenen. Tot het me wel lukt.’
Ana María Shua
Tom gritó. Mamá estaba en la cocina, amasando. Tom tenía cuatro años, era sano y bastante grande para su edad. Podía gritar muy fuerte durante mucho tiempo. Mamá siempre leía libros acerca del cuidado y la educación de los niños. En esos libros, y también en las novelas, las madres (las buenas madres, las que realmente quieren a sus hijos) eran capaces de adivinar las causas del llanto de un chico con sólo prestar atención a sus características.
(desde Como una buena madre)
Dalton Trevisan
JOÃO Nicolau se fez homem: mascou fumo e cuspiu negro. Calçou as botas de cano alto, herança do pai, beijou os cabelos brancos da mãe e, sem dinheiro para o trem, seguiu rumo da cidade.
(de Novelas Nada Exemplares)
Lydia Davis
The girl wrote a story. “But how much better it would be if you wrote a novel,” said her mother. The girl built a doll-house. “But how much better if it were a real house,” her mother said. The girl made a small pillow for her father. “But wouldn’t a quilt be more practical,” said her mother. The girl dug a small hole in the garden. “But how much better if you dug a large hole,” said her mother. The girl dug a large hole and went to sleep in it. “But how much better if you slept forever,” said her mother.
(from The Collected Stories)
May Microfiction
Max Aub
… Meglio morta - mi disse. E l’unica cosa che desideravo era di darle soddisfazione!
(Traduzione di Lucrezia Panunzio Cipriani)
May Microfiction
Vera Caspary
The city that Sunday morning was quiet. Those millions of New Yorkers who, by need or preference, remain in town over a summer week-end had been crushed spiritless by humidity. Over the island hung a fog that smelled and felt like water in which too many soda-water glasses have been washed. Sitting at my desk, pen in hand, I treasured the sense that, among those millions, only I, Waldo Lydecker, was up and doing. The day just past, devoted to shock and misery, had stripped me of sorrow. Now I had gathered strength for the writing of Laura’s epitaph.
Miguel Torga (Adolfo Correia da Rocha)
Naquela tarde, à hora em que o céu se mostrava mais duro e mais sinistro, Vicente abriu as asas negras e partiu. Quarenta dias eram já decorridos desde que, integrado na leva dos escolhidos, dera entrada na Arca.
(de Bichos)
D G Compton (David Guy Compton)
Tuesday
Katherine Mortenhoe… So now I had a name to work on, and a case history. I also had NTV’s background report. The last two would be of a little help. The facts in the case history and the background report - chopped arbitrarily, like photographs, out of continuous time for the neatest of reasons - where therefore untrue. Untrue, that is, in the largest sense.
Lorine Niedecker
And the place
was water
Fish
fowl
flood
Water lily mud
My life
in the leaves and on water
My mother and I
born
in swale and swamp and sworn
to water
My father
thru marsh fog
sculled down
from high ground
saw her face
at the organ
bore the weight of lake water
and the cold—
he seined for carp to be sold
that their daughter
might go high
on land
to learn
Saw his wife turn
deaf
and away
She
who knew boats
and ropes
no longer played
She helped him string out nets
for tarring
And she could shoot
He was cool
to the man
who stole his minnows
by night and next day offered
to sell them back
He brought in a sack
of dandelion greens
if no flood
No oranges—none at hand
No marsh marigold
where the water rose
He kept us afloat
I mourn her not hearing canvasbacks
their blast-off rise
from the water
Not hearing sora
rails’s sweet
spoon-tapped waterglass-
descending scale-
tear-drop-tittle
Did she giggle
as a girl?
…
(from the Collected Works)
Lorine Niedecker May 12, 1903 - May 12, 2013
Happy Mother’s Day! Buona Festa della Mamma!
Dorothy B Hughes
It was good standing there on the promontory overlooking the evening sea, the fog lilting itself like gauzy veils to touch his face. There was something in it akin to flying; the sense of being lifted high above crawling earth, of being a part of the wildness of air. Something too of being closed within an unknown and strange world of mist and cloud and wind.
Blaise Cendrars (Frédéric Louis Sauser)
La journée venait de finir. Les bonnes gens rentraient des champs, qui une bine sur l’épaule ou un panier au bras. En tête venaient les jeunes filles en corselet blanc et la cotte haut-plissée. Elles se tenaient par la taille et chantaient :
Wenn ich ein Vöglein wär
Und auch zwei Flüglein hätt
Flög ich zu dir…
Chester Himes
I dreamed a fellow asked me if I wanted a dog and I said yeah, I’d like to have a dog and he went off and came back with a little black dog with stiff black gold-tipped hair and sad eyes that looked something like a wirehaired terrier. I was standing in front of a streetcar that was just about to start and the fellow led the dog by a piece of heavy stiff wire twisted about its neck and handed me the end of the wire and asked me if I liked the dog. I took the wire and said sure I liked the dog. Then the dog broke loose and ran over to the side of the street trailing the wire behind him and the fellow ran and caught it and brought it back and gave it to me again.
Gwyneth Jones
My first thought, when I saw the sisters, was that they were simply too perfect.
(from The Universe of Things)
Emma Tennant
EDITOR’S NARRATIVE
IN THE EARLY 1950s Michael Dalzell was a young man. He owned estates in the Borders of Scotland and a small house in central London, and when he decided to marry, as we can see from this photograph, he chose as his bride a fair-haired girl of the same class as himself.
