Sublime

There’s a flock of swans on a lake in the deepening autumn. As the nights grow colder, they all fly away. Except one, for reasons Alkaitis can’t remember: a lone swan who doesn’t perceive the approaching danger or loves the lake too much to leave even though it’s clearly time to go or is afflicted by hubris—the swan’s motivations were hazy and, Alk

An excellent joke I heard at last night’s signing: It’s late at night and a man is getting ready to go to bed when he hears a knock on his door. He opens it and looks down to see a snail. “Yes,” it says. “I’d like to talk to you about buying some magazine subscriptions.” Furious at being disturbed, the man rears back, kicks the snail as hard as he

I hear one of them say something that I can’t quite make out but sounds like “she’s dying” or “she’s dead.” My dad howls, “She was my favorite daughter.” I enjoy that for a moment. I have two sisters. I can’t wait to tell them. I’d always suspected it. Then my mother wails, “Just like the cat!” Because our cat Winkels had recently met an untimely e

“So the bartender points at the piano in the corner says, ‘Go ahead.’ Guy puts the octopus on the piano stool—Pianoctamus! Pianoctamum Bailey!—octopus flips up the lid, plays a few scales, then lays out a little étude on the piano.”

I emerged from the woods into a small, frozen marshland—and abruptly found myself three ski-lengths away from a mother moose. She’d been feeding with her child among the low willows. The moose looked up as startled as I; she was facing me head-on, her nostrils flaring, her front legs taut, leaning forward. Her eyes were locked on my body, one ear l

He had interacted with the creature only briefly, but his clothes were already covered in hair.

but my brother and I hated him a little and for a long time afterward the image of the mouse huddled in fright, then gone, stuck sharp in our minds.