Monthly Archives: January 2017

Thanks to The Millions for their support of Ottessa Moshfegh and Unsaid:   HOMESICK FOR ANOTHER WORLD, by Ottessa Moshfegh: “A long, dull day of jury duty in 2008 was redeemed by a lunchtime discovery of Unsaid magazine and its … Continue reading →

This is me: one out of billions, not destitute, never married, not well traveled, a fan for music, like those long drawling symphonies, church songs, blind men on the piano, all that beautiful misery. My name is Bettina Clark. I … Continue reading →

1 My head becomes raw as the heat leaves. The heat leaves me through my head, my feet. The darkness of a snow-sky, a white-lie, and more snow coming. Black corn stalks sharp against my instep. I count my steps … Continue reading →

  I am so close to me she stays with me. Can you see from her all the way to the end of my life? We waited for the transformation together. I could listen to her body temperature and she … Continue reading →

  Hemlocks laddered by pegs of broken branches. Remnants of things I knew, people I love, and can’t climb anymore. The rings of this stump are the years I have lived. Each pushing out from the one from before. A … Continue reading →

Blind Betty says we’re underwater now. After two hours riding aboveground we go underground to cross some river is why Blind Betty says what she says. We are on this train to go visit some museum somewhere but they don’t … Continue reading →

  (…the understanding here of course being that if the rope were to support the man’s weight the question would be answered, but if the rope was severed we’d have to find another rope, which given the expanse of desert … Continue reading →

  We fled the elders. When the guns had been once again taken up and embraced with the touch of a dancer taking up a partner’s hand and placing it into position, here, there, there was no choice but for … Continue reading →

My husband drives his taxi from five in the morning until six at night. I wake up before him to boil water for tea, lay out his clothes, make his bath. Then I go back to sleep. When it is … Continue reading →

  (NOTE: This lecture was originally presented by Powell to the MFA Creative Writing Program of Columbia University in September, 2010.) I am thinking tonight, as I address this unenviable task, of Flannery O’Connor, because she would advise against it, … Continue reading →