October 2009
25 posts
Fiction by Yew Leong Lee in QLRS →
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You—unlike the filmmakers whose films compete mainly with the other films opening the same weekend, and unlike the musicians who are mainly competing with the other acts on the radio at that time—are competing against not just the other books that are lined up in the new releases section (which in itself is already filled with Padgett Powell, and John Irving, and Audrey Neffenegger),...
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Windy. The condo creaks. What I wouldn’t do for another rain storm on the porch of the Pound House. Or for a walk through the park to the Alachua County Library. The library in Cedar Rapids, Iowa is in a near-abandonded mall because the library building died in flood last summer.
I am glad it was not my childhood library or else I would be completely heart sick.
I will be gone soon.
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Have I told you about the midwest? About how it must be a great place to be a child. The towns are small enough to wrap your young mind around and to visit all four corners by bicycle. Chicago is towering madam just out of reach, but near enough your parents will take you to visit. About how there are four distinct seasons, and the summer and the winter deal in extremes of heat and cold. How there...
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I listened to Sufjan Steven’s Illinois in the car. Oh, I am from Illinois, I thought. Oh, I went to Carl Sandburg Elementary, I thought. I have been to Decatur. It’s true. It’s all true.
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Lunch with sister. Dinner with brother and sister. Waffle! Cheeseburger! At Prairie Lights I saw Padgett Powell’s face. I saw David Leavitt’s signature. I read about a bright day that you and I spent together, that someone else wrote about. I bought a kombucha to celebrate. At K-Mart we pulled scales out of their protective sleeves. We all weighed the same, brother, sister, brother. We...
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Dinner tonight: dead cow and fish cheeks, courtesy of an untamed woman. Bought three new books, none for myself. I dreamt you and I were in side-by-side recliners. A wall separated us but we were aware that we were in the same recumbent position. I no longer own any keys. Bicycle gone, apartment gone, car gone. I don’t know what’s next.
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You need, I say, a little surface tension. Because what you are creating in your little things are bubbles. Worlds! And you need them to come together, if even for a moment, or else you have nothing.
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Greg and Michael stopped by. Joel yesterday. Callista didn’t come, but she texted. “I have to pick up my wife. I can’t make it today,” the text from her phone number said. Callista’s wife? Uncertain. Food today looked American. Food tonight hasn’t been had yet. There exists in Forsyth, Georgia an Econo Lodge where the doors are black and taller than usual. This...
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Coffee, tea, coffee. Red velvet cake by Target. Spinach, eggs, and cheese by me. I wonder if Mary Robison remembers who I am. Oh, that hardly matters at this point in time. Listen: the rumble of a drier, the voices of birds, and those of children. “And if I wait for you, will you come to me?” I ask this in my mind to Callista, the girl who made plans a few minutes ago to come look at...
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“If you forgive you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.” Marilynne Robinson, HOME.
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A catalogue: Starbucks House Blend, Pomegranate Blueberry juice, Equate brand Pain Reliever PM, a pile of credit cards, a pen, a double-edged razor blade paper wrapper, the dust jacket for the hardcover of Marilynne Robinson’s home, a q-tip, and a napkin. All on my desk right now. I am alternating sips between the juice and the coffee. Last night I gave a girl named Alysse a long, brown...
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I carried boards into Jane Mead’s house today. I am writing a story about her house, although, a fictional version of it. We create fictional versions of each other based on incomplete evidence and miscommunications. You and I did this and we hurt each other. I didn’t know how to get off that course because each step I made seemed to take me deeper and deeper into the murk. I made an...
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Did I ever tell you about Jane Mead’s house? Did I get a chance to? I can’t remember. Isn’t it funny about memory: How the past fades until it is almost imperceptible. Will I still remember your face in the morning? Your scent? How much I long to be there, if only to deepen the impression that is already eroding.
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There is so much I haven’t told you. So much I want to tell to you. The wisps of cloud over the Appalachian Mountains. The act of rinsing half-full ketchup bottles out. Mayonnaise jars. The feeling of failure and famine that accompanies the rinsing, but also the feeling of accomplishment. I want to tell you about the book Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. And the intuition of the infinite. The...
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Have I told you how beautiful is Tennessee? How beautiful is Kentucky? How beautiful to love someone through their weakness as well as their strength? Have I told you these things? How good it is to have an invitation for eggs and instant grits from a one-time acquaintance just because you are hungry and have no food? How good it is when a student of yours does something genuinely nice for you?...
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I made a three-year-old packet of pineapple Kool-Aid. It did not taste much like pineapple. Sugar, on the other hand, it tasted of in spades. I am having an email exchange with a girl whom I’d like to adopt. I might examine the possibility of that happening, but I doubt her parents would cede her. I doubt the courts would allow a man with three-year-old Kool-Aid packets to adopt anyone.
...
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I am surrounded by the ruins of my belongings. I have a feeling that I won’t be settled again for a very long time. Unsettling. The delight of the home, and of the bedroom, is supreme to me. I wish. I wish. And I wish. But there is no lamp, and there is no genie, and I am no prince.
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A few weeks ago a friend asked me if I still ate canned soup. No! I said. Me neither! she replied. But today I broke the canned-soup fast. Currently craving: peanut-butter-cup ice cream or a soda. Not sure I should buy either. A woman named Heath came to examine my bed. She wished to purchase it for her mother, but it wasn’t to her liking. “I know my mother’s bed intimately, and...
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i miss you. i’m a shoe. i miss you. i eschew.
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I spilled curry on my shirt. Oh, my beautiful shirt. The latest victim to my oh-so-small kitchen counters. I ate Halls cough drops at 15 calories a drop. I felt the warm air on my bare skin as I reclined on my porch. I watched a lizard scurry on the wood slats at my feet. Rich Mullins once said, “There’s so much beauty around us, but just two eyes to see. Everywhere I go, I’m...
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