Articles

You let your feet decide how to walk it, andante or andantino— only allow your breathing to become what wind is in the eucalyptus, now a susurrus, now a slow erasure of distractions. Cries from the soccer field and the street noise in Skala dissolve in the attention the stones require you give each footfall.…

Eight, mouthy, and proud, you didn’t want his help, so while you watched the stairs revolve below your feet with every gust, your father watched you climb the last three flights dizzy, on your hands and knees, before your brother, crouched by the door, jumped out to scare you, and you missed the step. Which…

Tweaked out on her mother’s meth, the twelve-year-old walks the county roads of my childhood, sees stars in a sky crow-feather black, finds the pack of wild dogs, the teeth of the mottled Lab less frightening than her uncle and his bristle-brush whiskers. There’s little left to do here but grow long and mean, to…

  Tim Gautreaux was born in Morgan City, Louisiana, in 1947. He attended Nicholls State University and the University of South Carolina, where he earned a PhD in English literature. In 1972 he began teaching creative writing at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he directed the creative writing program until his retirement in 2003. His books…

To cure the hard habit of anger, eat an orange so slowly the juice spills from your fingers and waters the wild gladioli that purple the stones on high Kastelli. To learn patience, go with Ritsa to the little stoa of a shop in Skala, where old Pandalis weighs the small bags of chickpeas and…

Early light brightens the blue shutters, overspilling the foot of the bed we sleep in. It is quiet yet…deep and tidal when I hear the light say, You will not be given to do everything you want. I remain quiet, as nearly poised as the edge of salt in the air that fills the room.…

I ran down the emergency-room ramp, holding Jon in one arm, pressing the cut with the other, and passed through the sliding glass doors into a narrow corridor lined with Saturday-night gurneys and men and one woman, all slumped or lying down on the black and white checkered tile, all clutching what seemed concussions and…

IN THE MID-1980s, just shy of my fortieth birthday, I found myself out of work and divorced. It was a crash landing of all my aspirations, and crawling from the wreckage of two traumas, I was grieved, confused, desperate—cut off from the world I thought I understood. In the fragile years that followed, I tried…

(1994) FROM THE BREAKFAST BUFFET, Aurora slipped an apple and a banana into the pockets of her apron before opening the doors of the Seneca Hotel café. She looked around for the two skinny, towheaded schoolboys who often sidled up to accept her secret handouts. She never gave them donuts or sugary drinks, but always…

The first angel Ian drew was silent as the sun on empty fields of snow. Nothing was fast or slow, the world not yet begun. The second angel Ian drew sang green out of the ground. Birds of the air, rejoice. Let fire find its voice, each river its own sound. The third angel Ian…