Flowers and fruit

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Talon

Poetry(I thought it lost like a gate left open or a one-winged parenthesis, the hooked talon my father brought back from India in 1932, and later gave to me when...

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MemoirI find I cannot cry on the day of the funeral or for many nights after the news of Ellen’s death and it is as if I am stunned by this loss, as if I am too close to this absence for it to mean anything yet, until two weeks later when I take the handle of the mould in my hands and lay the flat back of it against my cheek, and I cry and I cry.

The party for Crabs

FictionAs she lists the night’s specials, Claire attempts to figure out the party’s dynamic. Shared complexions make the elegant woman the little girl’s mother, surely. It’s the women’s relationship she can’t figure out. University friends? Distant cousins? Their conversation seems too polite for either. Unnatural.

Strong food

EssayThe principal reason Ju/’hoansi didn’t seek to accumulate wealth or surpluses was because they were confident first in the inherent providence of their environment and second in their ability to exploit it – so they were content to focus their energies on meeting only their immediate material needs rather than on creating or controlling surpluses.