- Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque
American Vampire

- Chris Ware
The Acme Novelty Date Book 1986-1995

Dearest Jane:
   In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me. I'm just as glad they haven't consulted me about the tiresome details. What they have worked out is this: I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit-ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not. Last night, time and my body decided to take me to the movies. I saw The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I took very hard. To an unmoored, middle-aged man like myself, it was heart-breaking. That's all right. I like to have my heart broken.


- Kurt Vonnegut
Letters

CHARM SCHOOL


Madame Gabrielle, were you really French?
And what were those heavy books
You made them balance on top of their heads,
Young women with secret aspirations,
We saw strolling past the row of windows
In the large room above Guido's barbershop?

On the same floor was the office of an obscure
Weekly preaching bloody revolution.
Men with raised collars and roving eyes
Wandered in and out. When they conspired
They spat and pulled down the yellow shades,
Not to raise them or open the windows again

Until the summer heat came and your students
Wore dresses with their shoulders bared
As they promenaded with books on their heads,
And the bald customer in the barbershop
Sat sweating while overseeing in the mirror
His three remaining hairs being combed.


- Charles Simic

   Louisa sang as she came over the crest of the hill from the white folks' kitchen. Her skin was the color of oak leaves on young trees in fall. Her breasts, firm and up-pointed like ripe acorns. And her singing had the low murmur of winds in fig trees. Bob Stone, younger son of the people she worked for, loved her. By the way the world reckons things, he had won her. By measure of that warm glow which came into her mind at thought of him, he had won her. Tom Burwell, whom the whole town called Big Boy, also loved her. But working in the fields all day, and far away from her, gave him no chance to show it. Though often enough of evenings he tried to. Somehow, he never got along. Strong as he was with hands upon the ax or plow, he found it difficult to hold her. Or so he thought. But the fact was that he held her to factory town more firmly than he thought for. His black balanced, and pulled against, the white of Stone, when she thought of them. And her mind was vaguely upon them as she came over the crest of the hill, coming from the white folks' kitchen. As she sang softly at the evil face of the full moon.


- Jean Toomer
Cane

   I returned to my father's sagging chair, in the silent living room, and sat looking at my mother as she remained upright and unmoving in her corner of the couch. Despite the change I sensed in her, since out time on the porch, she seemed calm, in her way, sitting there with the afghan on her lap. It was like the old days, when I would come home from wherever I was and my mother would take up her position exactly there, in the corner of the couch, with a book and her reading glasses, while my father graded papers in his study and I sat in the armchair with a book of my own. I had liked coming home, liked sitting in that chair with the sound of pages turning and of children playing in the street, liked, above all, the sense of something peaceful from childhood still flowing through the house, and I wondered how it was that I had let it all slip away. And as I sat there, in the drowsy warmth, I seemed to hear a humming sound, a spectral tune, drifting up out of my childhood. It was something my mother used to sing, a song from her own girlhood. "I remember," I said, because I wanted to talk to my mother, I wanted to tell her that I remembered a tune she had once hummed, when I was a boy, but the sound of the humming crept into my words, and only then did I realize that my mother was sitting there humming that tune. And I was stirred that she was humming a tune from our two childhoods, as she sat in the darkening room with her eyes closed, a tune that ascended in three leaps and then came slowly down, like a feather falling, but at the same time I wanted her to stop humming that tune so that I could speak to her, before I was no longer there. After all, it was only a short visit. When my mother stopped humming I said, "I know I haven't been back for a while, but if we could just talk a little, a little talk, talk to me - " The words sounded louder than I had intended, as if I had shouted them in an empty house.


- Steven Millhauser
"Sons and Mothers"

   It was hard to understand the Brain because he really was a brain. He knew all kinds of big scientific words. He read Scientific American magazine, and had a small chemistry laboratory. The reason we called him Agony Flea was that he always seemed depressed about something, we never knew what. He was always moping around like a sad sack, and when he talked he always whined. He put on an English accent, too. A whiny English accent. But he was very smart. He showed us lots of chemistry tricks and made small bombs for us. Some chemical that when you spilled it somewhere it didn't go off for about fifteen minutes. It just sat there like some water or something. It didn't do anything. But after some time went by it exploded into flames and set everything around it on fire. We had a lot of fun with that chemical.
   Brain also insisted that he could make an atomic bomb if he had enough money to get the parts. We believed him and planned someday to raise the money for him so he could build the big one.
   Brain spoke: "Here is our report. The first thing we did was assemble all the old Captain Marvel comics we could find. A considerable quantity, I must say. Fifty-five editions, covering most of the period between 1940 and 1948. The significant issues all came out during that period. C.C. Beck maintained control of the operation until the PTA got after Fawcett Publications."
   "Yeaahhh, scream, yell."
   "There is no better source, as I am sure you are all aware, than Captain Marvel comics for matters, uh, occult, shall we call them? OK, now, Captain Marvel comics did have several stories about Satan in them. I place them here as exhibit A for your inspection."
   "Hooray, scream, yell."
   "We also went to the library and found numerous entries under 'Satan'..."
   "Oh yeah," some kid yelled. "Who is this 'we' you're talking about?"
   We all loved to tease the Brain. And he enjoyed it.
   "Oh, alright," the Brain answered, "if you insist then, it was I, just I. Nobody would go with me and help me. Honestly, I don't know why I come to these club meetings."
   "Neither do we, Brain. Why do you come?" some kid yelled.



- John Fahey
"Neighborhood"