The year we lived in Japan, the volcano at the edge of town hiccupped, covering everything in six inches of heavy golden dust. The sky turned yellow, with clouds so low they were like ceilings. No one could remember anything like it. Businesses and schools closed that first day; there was no way to handle the ash, no plows on hand in that tropical city. It was a nuisance, we were told, but not really dangerous; children poured outside to play wearing bathing suits and surgical masks. Housewives vacuumed the street. Dust got into the air raid siren and it blared over the city for the first time since World War II. Our ...

The twins were born in the middle of the night in deepest winter in the northernmost town in Michigan. It was clear from the beginning that the girls were identical: matching black hair and pale skin and grayish-blue eyes. Even the way they cried, their tiny indistinguishable voices blending into a single subdued complaint that lacked the high-pitched wailing of most newborns. That night the sky was expressionless (if you overlook the stars). It had a colorless blankness the twins would come to intimately know. Their father had been a soldier who’d seen some of the world. A steadfast Catholic, he always attended daily Mass at the still-dark hour of 7 a.m. That morning he gazed at ...

At the Dead Pines trail station, the crowd parted as if the Judge were the Lord Almighty himself. He tossed the traces to a man Phoebe hadn’t seen before and slid the Mauser from its sock. Her grandpap said, “This shan’t take thirty minutes.” He bobbed his head to acknowledge Doc Joel, also out from Cheyenne, the only other person in the nervous gaggle she knew by name. The station was nothing more than a slant-roofed log box, whole lines of chinking blown out by winters’ winds and spring storms. A simple gallows had been erected, dirt freshly turned where barked Lodgepole pine logs were stuck into the ground. A ...

If a body is what you want, then here is bone and gristle and flesh. Here is the clavicle-snapped wish, the aorta’s opened valves, the leap thought makes at the synaptic gap. Here is the adrenaline rush you crave, that inexorable flight, that insane puncture into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish what you've started. Because here, Bullet, here is where I complete the word you bring hissing through the air, here is where I moan the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have inside of me, each twist of the round spun deeper, because here, Bullet, here is where the world ends, every time.

The following is a scene from the novel I'm writing, "What Is Visible.” The book is a fictional exploration of the real-life nineteenth century figure, Laura Bridgman, the first deaf and blind person to learn language. Laura's story has been largely eclipsed by that of the later Helen Keller, but in the mid-1800s, Laura was considered the second most famous woman in the world, second only to Queen Victoria. Thousands of people came to see her on Exhibition Days at Perkins Institute in Boston where she was educated by the famed philanthropist Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, one of the Secret 6 who financed John Brown. Laura was visited by virtually every important figure of the time, from ...

Adult Life Jackets: A Collaborative Work of Visual Art and Poetry by Scott Sandell and Christopher Watkins, Deepwater Editions (tentative release date of November 2008) Excerpts from the book are forthcoming in The Southampton Review. Included in the work is the poem: As If She Has Two Marbles in Her Ears As If She Has Two Marbles In Her Ears As if she has two marbles in her ears— taupe and ochre swirls laced with cream, ocean greens, light sienna; deftly polished glints of sterling silver—sounds of clapping reach her mind, prism- angled, from a small but yearning distance, like a wind gust moving through a bleached-out skull.                         When she prays, she lays her hands out like a net over the sea. Above her, in the ceiling, ...

Exerpt from 'Opheliac,' a short story published in its entirety in The Saint Ann's Review (2009 Summer/Fall issue): His name is Slippy. Each mention of the name makes the possibility of his existence a little less remote. I don’t know how many others he has entered. He seems to be new to the ranks of controls, unable as yet to materialize or even communicate a likeness of himself. Or maybe he has just renewed his license after decades on parole. He is out of practice, in other words, or my efforts of visualization don’t strike him as sincere enough to bother with. “Slippy,” whispers Dr. Park, the acupuncturist. She glowers over her reading ...

"The Kerouac House is unique in awarding three full months of residency alongside opportunities to teach, give readings, and even publish. My time there was invaluably rewarding."

“Don't expect to breeze your way onto a Bugis schooner. The crews earn enough from cargoes and can do without you and your paltry fare,” cautioned my guidebook on Indonesia. But the moment I strayed into the glaring sunlight on the docks at Parepare, I discovered that this advice wasn’t meant for women. As I walked alongside the row of schooners, eager shouts hit me like volleys of gunfire, from one crew after another. No woman traveler, not even a fortyish one like me, could be said to lack for willing takers. I had no intention of going for a schooner ride. The Bugis sailors of Sulawesi Island had practiced piracy for centuries—still did, according to the stories I’d heard in ...

The chimeras need feed. Their trough is empty except for pieces of orange rind strewn like busted taillights. They spit cud at its sides in protest. Their trough is an old fishing boat, Eddie’s dead father’s; the mushy lumps thud hollowly against the metal, inching the boat across the dewy grass at angles. Eddie goes to the barn to prepare their feed. A lump, greenish, clips his arm from behind on the way. Per Dr. Wu’s instructions, and the American Heart Association’s recommendations, each serving of feed includes a measured blend of fruit (primarily citrus), legumes (beans, peas), vegetables (broccoli, zucchini), and whole grains (such as oats), tossed with cod liver oil. The ...